Gender Gap in Aptitude Test of Iranian EFL learners

Abstract

The present study was carried out with the aim of finding gender gap in a recent aptitude test, the Cognitive Ability for Novelty in Acquisition of Language (CANAL-FT) as applied to foreign language test designed by Grigorenko et al. (2002). For the purposes of this research, 126 undergraduate students (95 females and 31 males) all majoring in English at Shiraz Azad University participated in this study. The CANAL-FT was given to the students in order to predict the learners' foreign language abilities and success. In terms of gender and test performances, it was found that females had a significantly better performance than males.