The Gender Gap in Second Language Acquisition: Gender Differences in the Acquisition of Dutch among Immigrants from 88 Countries with 49 Mother Tongues

Gender differences were analyzed across countries of origin and continents, and across mother tongues and language families, using a large-scale database, containing information on 27,119 adult learners of Dutch as a second language. Female learners consistently outperformed male learners in speaking and writing proficiency in Dutch as a second language. This gender gap remained remarkably robust and constant when other learner characteristics were taken into account, such as education, age of arrival, length of residence and hours studying Dutch. For reading and listening skills in Dutch, no gender gap was found. In addition, we found a general gender by education effect for all four language skills in Dutch for speaking, writing, reading, and listening. Female language learners turned out to profit more from higher educational training than male learners do in adult second language acquisition. These findings do not seem to match nurture-oriented explanatory frameworks based for instance on a human capital approach or gender-specific acculturation processes. Rather, they seem to corroborate a nature-based, gene-environment correlational framework in which language proficiency being a genetically-influenced ability interacting with environmental factors such as motivation, orientation, education, and learner strategies that still mediate between endowment and acquiring language proficiency at an adult stage.

本研究依托涵盖27119名荷兰语第二语言成年学习者信息的大规模数据库，针对学习者的原籍国家、所在大洲、母语及语系维度展开性别差异分析。研究发现，女性荷兰语第二语言学习者在口语与书面语熟练度上始终优于男性学习者。即便纳入学习者的受教育程度、入境年龄、居住时长及荷兰语学习时长等其他个体特征进行控制，该性别差异依然表现出极强的稳定性与一致性。而在荷兰语的阅读与听力技能维度，则未观测到显著性别差异。此外，针对荷兰语口语、书面语、阅读及听力四项技能，均观测到性别与受教育程度的交互效应。在成人第二语言习得场景中，相较于男性学习者，女性语言学习者能从更高水平的教育训练中获得更多收益。上述研究结果似乎与基于人力资本理论或特定性别文化适应过程等后天导向的解释框架并不契合，反而更支持基于先天禀赋的基因-环境相关框架：语言熟练度作为一种受遗传因素影响的能力，会与动机、学习取向、教育背景及学习者策略等环境因素产生交互作用，而这些环境因素仍在成人阶段的禀赋与语言熟练度习得之间起到中介作用。