Gender Differences In Language Classrooms In Karachi University

Gender discrimination in every walk of society in Pakistan is one of the major issues now. The aim of this paper is to take this issue into a language classroom and to see if gender disparity is found there. To discover this, an English language proficiency classroom was selected where the academic activities of male and female learners of English were observed for ten weeks against eight variables, namely: awareness of personality, motivation for learning English, selection of topics for class discussion, style of presentation, peer evaluation, performance in classroom activities and problem solving, performance in single-gender and cross-gender groups, and test performance. The study revealed that female students were better at cognitiveacademic language proficiency whereas male learners were better at basic interpersonal communication skills. However, it was also discovered that some of the differences were culture specific rather than based on gender, i.e. there is little or no interaction between boys and girls beyond the family or school setting, hence hesitation in cross-gender communication in classrooms. Introduction