Job Discussion Forums

[rioux]

I was wondering what others have felt about teaching male and female students at the university level. From my own experience the ladies are so much more pleasant and less difficult to teach. The ones that don't care at all about being in English class will still for the most part behave. The men are much more difficult. They can be boisterous and quite hyper.

I know there are exceptions. I will say the very few men who are there and really try to learn are such a joy to teach.

[johntpartee]

I'm at a teachers college, so there are very few men in my classes; for the most part they are the best students since they don't have "partners in crime".

Exceptions abound, but your analysis is pretty much correct.

[chinatimes]

It's 50/50 with both genders. You just get less men usually in these English classes.

The women like to play you. If you get along with one female student the others will see that and then work as a team to get a higher mark. I would have the same female students regularly come up to me after class and ask for "inside information" about tests, which would later be given to the other students.

The guys can't do this. So, they might seem nice on day 1, but female students can also be manipulative to male teachers.

And yes, they do have partners in crime. I make sure each student, male or female does their part. It doesn't have to be a whole, but it has to be a part, not zilch.

One good female/male student can't take a test for one bad female/male student.

[Toast]

For me....in general the girls seem to try harder and actually come to class to study, higher levels of attendance, politeness and respect, send a text when they'll be absent etc.

I got the impression that the girls were more thankful to get a chance to go onto tertiary studies, while the boys felt they were entitled to do so - their right.

Many of my students are country kids. A couple have told me they had to fight to come to school as their father was obliged to financially contribute to send a boy cousin to university. "No money for girls - go to work!"....no way is a student like that going to come to class and just sleep, play cell phone games under the desk or send lovey dovey SMSs to Wang Fu Duo for the duration of the 90 minutes.

At the start of semester I can almost predict which will be my more rewarding classes based on the boy-girl ratio....50/50 will be a decent enough class....I had one last semester with 1 girl and 24 boys which in the end I really dragged ass going to.

Having been said, on the flip side in all 4 different classes I taught last semester the highest performing students who received the best grade were boys *not* girls, and they were brilliant students, but generally speaking......

[GeminiTiger]

I think I felt as the OP did when I first came to China. I found out later though as the years roll past that in fact some of the very best students are in fact boys. When one considers the fact that only 10% or so of any given English major class is boys and usually at least one boy is every class is truly interested in the course and at least one boy per term is likely one of your best students, the facts reveal themselves, academically through statistical analysis they are not any different than girls, just fewer in number. (In my experience)

In class, I don't really find that boys are that different from girls, they do not really have the same gender divisions that they have back home, they do not act more or less differently than the girls. They are not more or less naughty than the girls either . Don't tell me you don't have a girl in every class that can't help but talk at the wrong time and of course in the wrong language or use her phone during every class, especially during instructions or lectures.

[Non Sequitur]

I agree that girls are more motivated than boys, but hey we're paid to teach them all and I regard it as a challenge to wake the boys out of their torpor.
I award prizes and at my last school, boys got 'Most Enthusiastic' and 'Best Attitude'.
Girls got 'Best Student' and 'Best Team' awards.
If setting a prepared speaking test always make sure there's a topic that the boys will find interesting like 'What are my chances in the NBA?'
The team members abuse and make fun of each other, however, they do it in English and that's my aim.
'Hey, you'll do well in the NBA - as water boy!' is one comment I remember.

[roadwalker]

I think my experiences more or less match the others: the English major classes with fewer boys are generally a better experience for me than the non-English-major classes with more boys. And in the English major classes at least, one or two boys often are at the top or near the top of the class.

One reason (among several) why I prefer more girls than boys is that the boys' voices carry much more obviously when they are "whispering" than the girls do. I'm a bit of a stickler for students not talking when I'm talking or when I call on a student to speak. It annoys me when either are chatting (and not listening), but it is more disruptive with the deeper voices that usually belong to boys. (I'm using 'boys' and 'girls' because that's how they refer to themselves.)

[KopiKopi]

Women are naturally better with language then men. Women are less prone to worrying about making mistakes in a group setting... women are much more manipulative.

Men tend to be less talkative, more worried about looking dumb, but better at getting past learning difficulties than women, at least in my experience.

The best student is a student with an intended purpose for the material he is learning. Motivation trumps gender every time.

[teachingld2004]

English majors are mostly girls. I had one class of 27 girls and one boy. The girls thought he was just another one of the girls and he thought that they were all people. That class was a joy. When the semester ended,3 or 4 of the girls and the one guy became my friends. They would come here once a week and we would have the best time talking and laughing. His English is a good as a native speaker. Either 4 or 5 of them come over here on a regular basis. I do not teach them anymore, but we do teach eachother a lot of stuff.

In the business class there were 54 students, and about half were boys. One of them had the worst pronunciation, but he was a great student. 4 of them were funny and had great English skills. 2 of them really liked English and were ok students, but they tried. The rest of the boys I would have liked to have thrown out the window. They made the class hell. a lot of the girls were terrible at English, but they behaved. Not one girl was rude.

But what I do find out about the boys, when they are interested in English they are the best students, and top any girl I have had