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The ratio of women to men is 4 to 1 in beginning university Spanish courses, and this gap widens the higher the level of instruction (Chavez 2001). Prior experiments on reading in Spanish show that the interaction of readers' gender and passage content plays a significant role with learners at the intermediate levels, but not at advanced levels of instruction (Brantmeier 2006). The present study re-examines data (Brantmeier, Vanderplank, & Strube 2012), that did not consider gender and only included measures of achievement from an advanced course at the onset of the Spanish major, in order to answer new research questions about the evolution of L2 vocabulary knowledge, L2 grammar knowledge, and L2 reading comprehension. The current study investigates relationships among these factors with 235 university-level learners of Spanish. Using self-reported gender and an online placement test, results of the MANOVA and ANOVA analyses indicated a significant multivariate effect for all three dependent variables as a group (F > 10.0; p < 0.001), which demonstrates a significant difference in performance outcomes for all three skills depending upon both the level and gender of the participant. No significant interaction was found among level and gender. Females consistently scored slightly higher than males across all three levels with most abilities, and more advanced levels of instruction outscored lower levels of instruction. Overall, the study shows that proficiency appears to the main factor influencing growth in the three measures, with gender having a very small, but constant effect.
