Academic Journal
“I Would Study Harder if I Was a Girl”: Gendered Narratives of Low-Achieving Male and High-Achieving Female EFL Learners.
| Title: | “I Would Study Harder if I Was a Girl”: Gendered Narratives of Low-Achieving Male and High-Achieving Female EFL Learners. |
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| Authors: | Lu, Hangyan1 (AUTHOR) luhangyan@gmail.com, Luk, Jasmine1 (AUTHOR) |
| Source: | Journal of Language, Identity & Education. 2014, Vol. 13 Issue 1, p1-15. 15p. 1 Chart. |
| Abstract: | Informed by a social and critical turn of reading practices and a poststructuralist paradigm of gender, this study delved into the commonly held belief that reading and language learning is a feminine domain, and examined the connection between the construction of gendered subjectivities and English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) reading practices among two high-achieving female students and two low-achieving male students in China and Sweden. The narrative inquiry revealed that gender played a role in shaping their decisions concerning the extent to which they invested in EFL reading. The students’ narratives, characterized by subject positions that revealed a feminization of EFL reading and a subjectification to the patriarchal order, leads to our argument that English reading in both contexts can be viewed as a right for men but as work for women. This view gives male students a legitimate excuse to distance themselves from avid reading, but female students an inclination toward contradictory feelings of both desire and stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
| Subject Terms: | *Reading, *Psychological stress, English language textbooks for foreign speakers, Gender differences in education |
| Geographic Terms: | Sweden |
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| ISSN: | 15348458 |
| DOI: | 10.1080/15348458.2013.835571 |
| Database: | Communication & Mass Media Complete |
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