Gender Differences In Enlish Writing By Non-English Major College Students

Since college English education aims at directing students to achieve English proficiency comprehensively, it is a significant task to improve their writing skill effectively. As the old saying goes, the style is the man. Language usage as a kind of social behavior is characterized not only by individual experience but also by gender. So the thesis focuses on gender differences in English writing by Non-English major students in soiopsycholinguistic approach and explains these differences on the basis of sociology and psychology.The students as the test subjects of the research are from different departments in Shanghai Lixin University of Commerce. First, in order to find out the gender differences in student interests and preferred topics, the data from the questionnaires completed by 173 males and 183 females are analyzed with SPSS. According to the results by Independent Samples Test and Correlation Test, the following gender differences can be concluded:(1) The students prefer to choose different topics to write about according to their own interests; and,(2) When assigned a topic in which students have no interest at all, female students are more likely to finish it diligently than male students since females are more amenable and cooperative.Moreover, by the comparative analysis of the essays of 123 male students and 129 female students'essays, the following gender differences in text are revealed.(1) The tone of the writing by male students is bold while that of female students is tentative;(2) Male students prefer to support his ideas with fewer personal references than female students; and,(3) Female students accumulate more vocabulary than male students and like using emotion words.