Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

380 Part 5: Language and Identity
access to education, and hence, their access to literacy development in L1s
and L2s, including English. As in many other British-colonized nations,
colonial educational authorities in Nigeria established a preference for
educating males over females that had long-lasting effects. Nigerian
women also face patriarchal structures that promote marriage over schooling
and which emphasize domestic roles rather than the development of
professional identities. In addition, policy-making bodies are male-dominated
in Nigeria, and hence, women tend not to participate in creating
policies that affect their own lives. Moreover, tuition-based education
required by the structural adjustment policies of the International
Monetary Fund has made it nearly impossible for many families to afford
school fees for all of their children. In the face of hard economic choices,
boys are more likely to be given the opportunity to go to school. Similar
fi ndings have been reported in research on Kenya (Kiluva-Ndunda, 2001)
and Tanzania (Vavrus, 2002).
Even in resource-rich nations, girls and women face patriarchal obstacles
that block their access to opportunities for L2 acquisition and use.
Kobayashi (2007a, 2007b) investigates how Japanese corporate structures
delimit ‘non-elite working women’s’ opportunities to access English education
through overseas programs sponsored by these companies. Many
women do not have access to company-sponsored English education in
Japan since the almost entirely male elite business and engineering
employees who work for large companies are the ones targeted for company-funded
English education. Kobayashi (2007a) found that in spite of
this circumstance, many such women paid their own way to do studyabroad
programs in Canada, often for personal reasons involving expanding
their intercultural horizons, rather than for enhancing their job
prospects in Japan.
Beyond the structural constraints language learners may encounter
outside classroom walls, gender discrimination in classrooms can also act
as an obstacle for language learning and development. Though teachers
are largely unconscious of it, both male and female teachers frequently
give unequal attention to male and female students in classrooms. Many
teachers tend to call on male students in classrooms more frequently, and
male students often speak up in class without much prompting from the
teacher. The result is greater opportunities for male students to participate
in question-and-answer routines, which means more opportunities for
practice in the target language. Unequal opportunity to verbally participate
has been found in studies of students of all ages in the United States.
In a study of over 100 classrooms, Sadker and Sadker (1985) found that on
average, boys spoke three times as much as girls, and that boys were eight
times more likely to respond to the teacher without being called on.
Though they are typically unaware of it, male and female teachers tend to
give more of their attention to male students in all aspects of classroom