On the Role of Gender on the Oral Production of the Native Language of Iranian Kids

Abstract

Some studies have been done to investigate the role of the gender on the acquisition of the first and second or foreign language. Actually it is assumed that the way through which girls acquire the native and the second language is somehow different from the way boys do it. It is worth mentioning that first language acquisition is different from second language acquisition in different ways (Hagen, 2008). However, the focus of this study is the acquisition of L1. The researchers have tried to show if girls‟ and boys‟ use of the first language is different in this study. To achieve this goal they selected four participants, two girls and two boys. One of the girls and one of the boys were less than three years old and the other two were more than three but less than four. The researchers made efforts to consider various social and personal factors while choosing the participants. They prepared twelve questions to ask of the participants and they also showed six short episodes of a silent film and asked them to tell something about each episode. Each participant was interviewed separately and whatever they said was recorded. The researchers transcribed the recordings for the later analysis. At the end of the project and after exact analysis of the recordings through categorization and providing schemes, they found that girls‟ speech was significantly different from the boys‟ in terms of choice of vocabulary, structure, interruptions, redundancy, hesitations, repetitions, understandability, relevance, and quality. Actually girls‟ speech was of a higher quality both in terms of structure and vocabulary. Therefore, it can beclaimed that there is a difference between the rate and the way of the first language acquisition of the girls and boys due to different factors such as biological, personal, social and some others