ELT at IPC

Research studies done in different educational systems than those of Latin-American sustain that there exist differences in the verbal ability and the scholar achievement performance in English related to gender that favor the female gender, increasing as students advance in the different educational levels.  The present study has the purpose of detecting if there exist the differences mentioned before related to gender in students of middle school and the first year of high school.  To do this study, students from both genders belonging to the last 10 groups of high school students that graduated from the Unidad Educativa “Academia Washington”, located in Caracas, Venezuela, where chosen.  Additionally, results (marks measure as percentiles) obtained in the verbal abilities test from the IOWA Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) where taken to investigate the variable verbal ability and the grades obtained by the students at the end of each school year in the traditional scale from 1 to 20 points to investigate the scholar achievement performance. The “t of student” test and the analysis of the variance of one factor to compare genders, simple regression techniques and analysis of simple linear correlation to determine the predictor power of one variable over the others were done using the SPSS statistical computerized package.  In general, significant differences were obtained favoring male students in verbal ability and favoring girls in scholar achievement performance.  Apparently, verbal ability does predict the scholar achievement performance in English in this specific school.  It is recommended that this same study be replicated in other institutions so as to observe if the differences are kept and as to enhance the information available with respect to the relations between gender, verbal ability and scholar achievement performance in English given that these type of studies seem pioneer in Venezuela.