Gender Differences in Language Skills among First Grade Students of Primary Schools

The purpose of the present study was to determine gender differences in the language development and skills of first grade students of primary schools in Marivan-Iran. To do this، 260 first grade students (140 males and 120 females) were chosen by multi stage cluster sampling and stratified random sampling methods among the first grade students in elementary schools in the 2011-2012 academic year. The test methodwas based on Test of Language Development-Primary Third Edition (TOLD-P-3) in order to assess language development and skills، which consists of 6 basic subscales and 3 secondary subscales. The obtained data were analyzed using the t independence test for comparing two groups. Results showed that girls outperformedin language development components like listening، speaking and semantics. However، there was no significant difference between the performance ofboys and girls in the organizing component (P≤0. 01).