Differences In Men\u27s And Women\u27s Esl Academic Writing At The University Of Melbourne

This study examines men\u27s and women\u27s ESL academic writing in their written assignments at the University of Melbourne. Three sets of men\u27s and women\u27s academic writing were analyzed for several common features of academic writing including syntactic complexity, means of integrating cited information, and methods of presenting arguments. The findings showed significant differences between the men\u27s and women\u27s texts in those three aspects. The structure of the women\u27s texts tended to be more complex than the men\u27s. The women also used more paraphrases to integrate cited information, and presented better organized arguments. Those characteristics of the women\u27s texts presumably would be advantages for their success in academic writing, and indicate a higher level of proficiency in ESL academic writing