Do Boys and Girls Visualise and Interpret Story Differently? A Gender-Based Study with EFL Learners Using Pop-Up Books

Abstract

This study investigates how boys and girls process the meaning of stories differently through the use of a pop-up book in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom in Aceh, Indonesia. Sixty fifth-grade students, consisting of 30 boys and 30 girls with intermediate English proficiency, participated in a series of tasks after reading a pop-up book entitled “Dreamworks Dragons: Adventures with Dragon: A Pop-up History”. Using a mixed-methods approach, this study assessed students’ visual recall, conceptual understanding, and emotional engagement through drawing, written responses, and interviews. Findings revealed that although boys and girls performed similarly in recalling visual scenes, girls demonstrated significantly stronger conceptual and emotional engagement. Girls’ responses often reflected empathy, moral reasoning, and character identification, whereas boys were more focused on action sequences and plot events. These differences suggest the importance of recognising gender-based narrative processing tendencies in designing EFL reading materials