Sunitha V

The following paper was designed to focus on how learners’ process different communication inputs (Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing) and secondly, how gender differences play a significant role in this process. However, materials and instruction methods must also affect individual responses to given tasks. A study on these issues will necessitate the development of gender sensitive instructional materials with a special focus on improving individual comprehension strategies. First year graduate students with English as a compulsory subject of the two selected institutions were taken for our study. In this paper we have reported the differences between the male and female attitudes of the learners and their beliefs in acquiring LSRW skills for learning English as a foreign language (EFL). Survey questionnaires (through Google forms) and interview questions were designed. One sample T-test and paired sample test were taken whereas, interview question responses were analysed to validate the data. The findings revealed that average responses regarding the difficulty of listening skills are statistically significant and correlation between male students learning listening skills are better in the collaborative learning environment whereas the female students depict a positive and moderate correlation for the same. However, it is also found that there is no significant difference between the overall performance of female and male students and the implications have been discussed in the paper.