Gender differences in the journal writing of Primary Six pupils

This research was undertaken to investigate the gender variations in the journal writing of Primary Six Pupils. Journal entries written by 10 boys and 10 girls for two terms were selected as data for this study. The research was conducted in four phases which progressed from large scale quantitative analyses of differences in text length and teacher-assigned topics versus topics of students’ own choice to gendered preferences for specific topics and specific genres and finally to a qualitative examination of selected texts of the same genre for patterned choices made at structural and clausal levels, in terms of transitivity choices (process types and participant roles).Master of Arts (Applied Linguistics