Studying Science or Studying Humanities – Which Makes You a Better Language Learner?

Irina Dementjeva, Lithuania

Irina Dementjeva started her teaching career in 1998 when she entered her Master studies and then worked at Shiauliai University as an assistant and Shiauliai Juliaus Janonis gymnasium as a teacher of English. Currently she is working at Panevezys Mintis gymnasium. E-mail: irina.dementjeva@gmail.com

Imagine the situation where you have to prepare a student for his first certificate examination of English, trying to get top results. Who would you prepare best – a Humanities student or Mathematicians- Physicists?

I would strongly recommend the Mathematicians. Having worked for 12 years at secondary and high school and university helped me make some personal discoveries of students capacities. The least expected result became most amazing and really contraversary to the previous learnt theories, myths and stereotypes. The example can be the year 2008/2009 when I had two different groups of school-leavers, preparing for their state exam of English language in quite different conditions. One group was mostly represented by boys with the exception of three ladies whereas the other group had the opposite proportion of male and female students and had Physics and Mathematics as their main subject, having 4 English lessons a week. The lucky Humanities had 5 lessons of extensive exam preparation. The abilities of both groups according to their average results were about the same, which was stated by the tests and piloting exam results. Nevertheless, my Physicists tended to be lazier at performing home tasks and slightly weaker at some points due to constant underpreparation. Humanities looked smarter however discriminative it sounds towards the compared group.

Let me introduce you to Lithuanian secondary school exam system. The state English examination lasts 3 hours 20 minutes and consists of four tests – Listening, Reading, Use of English and Writing. The maximum score is 100 points (Listening – 25; Reading – 25, Use of English – 20, Writing – 30 points) Most of the tasks are upper intermediate, though some of the tasks are advanced level.

The results are the following: the average score of my Physicists is 62,41 whereas the average score of Humanities is 55,15. The only top result belongs to a boy from the Physicists group – it is 100 points out of 100! To be just with the numbers I must make one comparison between boys and girls within both groups – it shows girls-boys preparation in Physicists group, which is 73,66%: 57,55% while in Humanities group it is 63,33%: 36,75. %. All girls: all boys proportion is 65.91: 51.15.

Some conclusions could be drawn: whereas on average girls performed exams better, students whose abilities to mathematics is better showed better results in their English language examination despite the fact that they had fewer lessons a week and slightly worse results during their studying. This can be explained by the fact that their ability to concentrate on the subject while exam revision is higher and much more productive. Also constant preparation and “Logical-Mathematical” thinking is proved to show the best average results among girls in Physicists group. Nevertheless, the only top result belongs to the boy from the same group (it’s the best result of English state examination in the whole school in the year 2008/2009).

If we recall the right-brain and left-brain theory left brained tend to be more capable of academic learning. Using logics, abilities in Maths and science combined together with high abilities in words and languages brings very promising results. Whatever conclusions are, we should always develop our students imagination and emotional side to bring some balance in our students “inner worlds”.

Please check the How the Motivate your Students course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Teaching English Through Multiple Intelligences course at Pilgrims website.