The Gender Factor in Composition Writing with the Use of the Cooperative and the Individualized Approaches at a

The stereotype of gender in performance in certain subjects is not new. Excellent performance in mathematics and the sciences has been long attributed to the male gender while such a performance in English Language and the Arts has also been attributed to the female gender. The use of English language in schools in Anglophone African countries is regarded as highly important if boys and girls are to be able to communicate effectively in the society. However, composition writing for most students has become an arduous and torturous activity. Two strategies dominate the teaching and learning of composition writing in the classroom setting. These are the individualised and the cooperative strategies. In an attempt to further address the challenges in composition writing, the researcher has attempted to find out which of the two strategies is relatively more effective than the other, using boys and girls in a Form One class in Gaborone, Botswana as a case study. Specifically, the study attempted to find out whether male and female students would perform evenly using the two strategies to write a composition on the topic „My First Day at School‟. Forty-one students made up of 21 male and 20 female students in a junior secondary school participated in writing the composition on two different occasions using the two mentioned strategies. A hypothesis was formulated to find out if any difference existed between the scores of male and female students taught either by the individualised or the cooperative strategies. DEBORAH ADENINHUN ADEYEMI 2 The hypothesis was tested with the paired t-test by adjusting for gender. It was found that the cooperative strategy was more successful than the individualised strategy, while female students performed better than their male counterparts. Based on these findings, pertinent conclusions and recommendations were made