Significant differences v456

Significant differences v456

Significant differences?

Introduction

In this first section we are going to read an article about a recent article in which some significant differences between men and women’s brains have been noted.
But first, let’s take a look at what you think about gender differences.

This first section contains 6 steps. Work them through step by step.

Step

Activity

 

 

Introduction

Find out what you already know.

Step 1

Speaking

Do the quizz about gender identity.

Step 2

Reading

A drag and drop exercise about different parts of the brain. Read the text 'Significant differences'. Answer the questions.

Step 3

Speaking

Answer and discuss questions about the text.

Step 4

Words

Drag parts of phrasal verbs in Exercise 1. Match the words in Exercise 2. Complete sentences in Exercise 3.

Step 5

Grammar

About phrasal verbs. Theory about intransitive, separable and inseparable verbs. Write words in the correct order.

Step 6

Task

Expand one of the gender types from the quizz.

 

Evaluation

Reflecting on what you have learned.

 

Difficult words? Search these on Cambridge Dictionaries

 

Step 1 - Speaking

Quiz

Boys will be boys and girls will be girls. Or will they? Some people say that we are living in crazy mixed up times and the old, traditional gender roles are no longer the only model available to us.

How about you, your friends, your family. Do you see traditional gender roles? Do you believe in traditional gender roles or do you believe there is more equality in male and female gender roles nowadays? Discuss with a classmate. 

What is your gender identity? Take this fun quiz and don’t take the results too seriously!

  1. What is your gender?
    1. male
    2. female
  2. You’re at a café and I’m going to get you a drink. What are you having?
    1. a big coke
    2. a juice
    3. a sprite
    4. a Frappuccino with soy milk slightly warmed
  3. You’re going to a party. How many beauty items do you use to get ready? [soap = 1, toothpaste = 1]
    1. less than 4
    2. 4-6
    3. 7-12
    4. more than 12
  4. How many pairs of pink items of clothing do you use?
    1. zero
    2. 1 or 2
    3. 3-6
    4. 7 plus
  5. You are visiting a friend and you have a few things to take along (some books etc.). How do you carry them?
    1. a plastic bag
    2. a leather satchel
    3. a backpack
    4. a selection of bags
  6. Have you ever dyed your hair?
    1. Never
    2. Once or twice, but nothing drastic
    3. I've a few streaks
    4. I would love to get my hair done all different colours, well, mainly pink!
  1. A school mate makes a derogatory comment about a member of your family. How do you react?
    1. I feel very angry.
    2. I respond with a witty remark that puts the person in their place.
    3. I shout so that everyone can hear.
    4. I burst into tears.
  2. There’s a big football match on tonight. Are you watching it?
    1. Any sport is great for me. Love it.
    2. If there’s nothing else to watch, then I will.
    3. Absolutely! I love football.
    4. No way! I hate it. I’d rather watch anything than sport on TV.
  3. Can you bake cakes?
    1. No and I don’t want to learn either.
    2. Yes, I love baking.
    3. Well, sure. You just open the packet and add water or milk.
    4. There are bakeries that sell the best cakes – why would I want to make my own?
  4. What is your attitude to gender roles in general?
    1. I like the traditional gender roles – men are men, and women are women.
    2. Does it really matter? Shake up the traditional ideas and let’s see what happens.
    3. Men and women are just the same and should always be treated the same.
    4. Don’t get me started on the gender pay gap!



Mostly a? You are a man's man. You can bring down a lion with your bare hands. You catch food to eat it, and you don’t know anything about making cakes.

Mostly b? You're a man in touch with your feminine side. You're sophisticated, charming and you don’t mind using products such as hair gel, or moisturiser. You care about what you wear and yes, you check yourself in the mirror.

Mostly c? People call you a tomboy, and if climbing a tree makes you a tomboy, then great. You’re not really into all this gender stuff. You just do your thing.

Mostly d? You are a girly girl, and you love all things about being a woman. And yes, you love pink!

Step 2 - Reading

You are going to read an article about brains and gender.
Before you read, do you know what the different parts of the brain are called?
Read on and find out.
In the exercise you drag the areas of the brain to what they do.

Read the article. What was the main conclusion of the study?

Study finds some significant differences in brains of men and women
By Michael Price Apr. 11, 2017, 3:00 AM (retrieved 10/06/2017)

Do the anatomical differences between men and women—sex organs, facial hair, and the like—extend to our brains?
The question has been as difficult to answer as it has been controversial. Now, the largest brain-imaging study of its kind indeed finds some sex-specific patterns, but overall more similarities than differences.
The work raises new questions about how brain differences between the sexes may influence intelligence and behavior.
For decades, brain scientists have noticed that on average, male brains tend to have slightly higher total brain volume than female ones, even when corrected for males’ larger average body size. But it has proved notoriously tricky to pin down exactly which substructures within the brain are more or less voluminous.
Most studies have looked at relatively small sample sizes—typically fewer than 100 brains—making large-scale conclusions impossible.
In the new study, a team of researchers led by psychologist Stuart Ritchie, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Edinburgh, turned to data from UK Biobank, an ongoing, long-term biomedical study of people living in the United Kingdom with 500,000 enrollees. A subset of those enrolled in the study underwent brain scans using MRI. In 2750 women and 2466 men aged 44–77, Ritchie and his colleagues examined the volumes of 68 regions within the brain, as well as the thickness of the cerebral cortex, the brain’s wrinkly outer layer thought to be important in consciousness, language, memory, perception, and other functions.


Adjusting for age, on average, they found that women tended to have significantly thicker cortices than men.
Thicker cortices have been associated with higher scores on a variety of cognitive and general intelligence tests. Meanwhile, men had higher brain volumes than women in every subcortical region they looked at, including the hippocampus (which plays broad roles in memory and spatial awareness), the amygdala (emotions, memory, and decision-making), striatum (learning, inhibition, and reward-processing), and thalamus (processing and relaying sensory information to other parts of the brain).
When the researchers adjusted the numbers to look at the subcortical regions relative to overall brain size, the comparisons became much closer: There were only 14 regions where men had higher brain volume and 10 regions where women did.
Volumes and cortical thickness between men also tended to vary much more than they did between women, the researchers report this month in a paper posted recently.
That’s intriguing because it lines up with previous work looking at sex and IQ tests. “[That previous study] finds no average difference in intelligence, but males were more variable than females,” Ritchie says. “This is why our finding that male participants’ brains were, in most measures, more variable than female participants’ brains is so interesting. It fits with a lot of other evidence that seems to point toward males being more variable physically and mentally.”

Despite the study’s consistent sex-linked patterns, the researchers also found considerable overlap between men and women in brain volume and cortical thickness, just as you might find in height. In other words, just by looking at the brain scan, or height, of someone plucked at random from the study, researchers would be hard pressed to say whether it came from a man or woman. That suggests both sexes’ brains are far more similar than they are different.
The study didn’t account for whether participants’ gender matched their biological designation as male or female.
The study’s sheer size makes the results convincing, writes Amber Ruigrok, a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom who has studied sex differences in the brain, in an email to Science. “Larger overall volumes in males and higher cortical thickness in females fits with findings from previous research. But since previous research mostly used relatively small sample sizes, this study confirms these predictions.”
The controversial—and still unsettled—question is whether these patterns mean anything to intelligence or behavior.
Though popular culture is replete with supposed examples of intellectual and behavioral differences between the sexes, only a few, like higher physical aggression in men, have been borne out by scientific research.
For the moment, Ritchie says his work isn’t equipped to answer such heady questions: He is focused on accurately describing the differences in the male and female brain, not speculating on what they could mean.

Source: www.sciencemag.org


Read the article again and answer the questions.

Step 3 - Speaking

You have read the text in Step 2. Now answer the questions below for yourself. Compare your answers with your partner.

  1. Which information in this report surprised you? Why?
  2. Do you know much about the brain? What do you know?
  3. How important are differences in gender? Think of at least one situation and say why gender is important.
  4. In which situations are they not at all important? Give your reasons.

Step 4 - Words

Drag the parts of the phrasal verbs. Check your answers in the text.

Study finds some significant differences in brains of men and women
By Michael Price Apr. 11, 2017, 3:00 AM (retrieved 10/06/2017)

Do the anatomical differences between men and women—sex organs, facial hair, and the like—extend to our brains?
The question has been as difficult to answer as it has been controversial. Now, the largest brain-imaging study of its kind indeed finds some sex-specific patterns, but overall more similarities than differences.
The work raises new questions about how brain differences between the sexes may influence intelligence and behavior.
For decades, brain scientists have noticed that on average, male brains tend to have slightly higher total brain volume than female ones, even when corrected for males’ larger average body size. But it has proved notoriously tricky to pin down exactly which substructures within the brain are more or less voluminous.
Most studies have looked at relatively small sample sizes—typically fewer than 100 brains—making large-scale conclusions impossible.
In the new study, a team of researchers led by psychologist Stuart Ritchie, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Edinburgh, turned to data from UK Biobank, an ongoing, long-term biomedical study of people living in the United Kingdom with 500,000 enrollees. A subset of those enrolled in the study underwent brain scans using MRI. In 2750 women and 2466 men aged 44–77, Ritchie and his colleagues examined the volumes of 68 regions within the brain, as well as the thickness of the cerebral cortex, the brain’s wrinkly outer layer thought to be important in consciousness, language, memory, perception, and other functions.


Adjusting for age, on average, they found that women tended to have significantly thicker cortices than men.
Thicker cortices have been associated with higher scores on a variety of cognitive and general intelligence tests. Meanwhile, men had higher brain volumes than women in every subcortical region they looked at, including the hippocampus (which plays broad roles in memory and spatial awareness), the amygdala (emotions, memory, and decision-making), striatum (learning, inhibition, and reward-processing), and thalamus (processing and relaying sensory information to other parts of the brain).
When the researchers adjusted the numbers to look at the subcortical regions relative to overall brain size, the comparisons became much closer: There were only 14 regions where men had higher brain volume and 10 regions where women did.
Volumes and cortical thickness between men also tended to vary much more than they did between women, the researchers report this month in a paper posted recently.
That’s intriguing because it lines up with previous work looking at sex and IQ tests. “[That previous study] finds no average difference in intelligence, but males were more variable than females,” Ritchie says. “This is why our finding that male participants’ brains were, in most measures, more variable than female participants’ brains is so interesting. It fits with a lot of other evidence that seems to point toward males being more variable physically and mentally.”

Despite the study’s consistent sex-linked patterns, the researchers also found considerable overlap between men and women in brain volume and cortical thickness, just as you might find in height. In other words, just by looking at the brain scan, or height, of someone plucked at random from the study, researchers would be hard pressed to say whether it came from a man or woman. That suggests both sexes’ brains are far more similar than they are different.
The study didn’t account for whether participants’ gender matched their biological designation as male or female.
The study’s sheer size makes the results convincing, writes Amber Ruigrok, a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom who has studied sex differences in the brain, in an email to Science. “Larger overall volumes in males and higher cortical thickness in females fits with findings from previous research. But since previous research mostly used relatively small sample sizes, this study confirms these predictions.”
The controversial—and still unsettled—question is whether these patterns mean anything to intelligence or behavior.
Though popular culture is replete with supposed examples of intellectual and behavioral differences between the sexes, only a few, like higher physical aggression in men, have been borne out by scientific research.
For the moment, Ritchie says his work isn’t equipped to answer such heady questions: He is focused on accurately describing the differences in the male and female brain, not speculating on what they could mean.
Source: http://www.sciencemag.org/

In this exercise complete the sentences with the correct verb.

Step 5 - Grammar

Let's look at ...phrasal verbs separable. A phrasal verb is a verb + a particle (a preposition or an adverb). You can use the same verb with different particles to change the meaning of the verb.
Look + out = be careful! Look out! There’s a hole.
Look + for = try to find something or someone. I’m looking for the head librarian.
Look + up = try to find information. Why don’t you look it up online?

A. Intransitive phrasal verb

These verbs don’t have objects. They describe actions of states:
I got up really early this morning.
Let’s eat out tonight – I don’t want to cook.

B. Separable phrasal verbs

Many phrasal verbs are transitive and they need an object. Transitive verbs can be separable or inseparable. With separable phrasal verbs, the object can come either before or after the particle:
You can put out the fire now.
You can put the fire out now.
If the object is a pronoun, then it must go before the particle:
You can put it out now.

Common separable phrasal verbs include:
bring out, call off, drop off, give up, look up, make up, pass around, pick up, put across, put out

Sometimes the object can only come between the verb and the particle:
I’ll call Jane back later.

Other verbs that behave like this include:
bring round, call (someone) over, invite out, talk (someone round, tell (two or more things) apart.

C. Inseparable phrasal verbs

With inseparable phrasal verbs, the object has to go after the particle. You can’t put it between the verb and the particle.
Here are some common inseparable phrasal verbs:
call for, come after, count on, get over, go into, look after, look for, look through, make of, run after, side with.

Step 6 - Task

Look back to the quiz at the beginning of this section and the text of step 2 Reading.
You are going to expand one of the gender type descriptions.

  1. Choose one of the gender types.
  2. Make some points – do you agree with the points that were made?
    What other qualities or characteristics can you add?
    (Remember to be respectful!)
  3. Do you think there is a difference of the brain in men and women
    or do you think generally speaking there are more similarities than differences? Mention an example to state your opinion.
  4. Write your paragraph in about 180-200 words.

Evaluation

Fill in this schedule and answer the questions below.

(Copy to Word or write down in your notebook)

Activity

 

Needs
Improvement

Satisfactory,
good

Excellent

 

Step 1 - Speaking

I can make the quizz about gender identity.

 

 

 

Step 2 - Reading

I can read and understand the text 'Significant differences' and answer the questions.

 

 

 

Step 3 - Speaking

I can answer and discuss questions about the text.

 

 

 

Step 4 - Words

I understand can and use the words.

 

 

 

Step 5 - Grammar

I understand and can use the grammar 'phrasal verbs'. 

 

 

 

Step 6 - Task

I can write a paragraph about a gender type and differences of the brain in men and women. 

 

 

  

 

What have you learnt in this period?
Answer the following questions:

  • What was the easiest part of this lesson?
  • What was the most difficult part?
  • What did you already know?
  • What was new to you in this lesson?
  • What do you have to ask your teacher?

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    VO-content
    Laatst gewijzigd
    2025-05-11 22:53:25
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    Toelichting
    Deze les valt onder de arrangeerbare leerlijn van de Stercollectie voor Engels voor vwo, leerjaar 4, 5 en 6. Dit is thema 'Men and women'. Het onderwerp van deze les is: Significant differences. In deze les wordt er gekeken naar (biologische) verschillen tussen mannen en vrouwen. Daarbij is er aandacht voor gender identiteit. De grammaticaopdracht gaat over phrasal verbs.
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    Trefwoorden
    arrangeerbaar, biologische verschillen, engels, gender identiteit, phrasal verbs, significant differences, stercollectie, v456

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