Lexical Variation in Learners’ Responses to Cue Words: The Effect of Gender

Abstract

This chapter looks at the effect of gender on words retrieved by the same sample of English as Foreign Language Learners at two points of time: sixth grade and ninth grade. The prompts were: ‘Body’, ‘Food’, ‘School’, ‘Town’, ‘Countryside’, ‘Transport’, ‘Animals’, ‘Sports’, and ‘Professions’. The study provides evidence of a significant increase of word responses in 9th grade for all cue words and for both groups. This result is relevant for lexical availability as well as for vocabulary research as it proves that learners continue learning words within each of the semantic categories represented by the cue words. The study is also relevant for sociolinguistic research on gender and language education as it reveals significant differences in favour of females in six prompts out of nine at the two collection times.