Gender, media presentation, and concern with the correct use of words—testing a three-way interaction

The purpose of this study is to examine the three-way interaction of gender, media presentation, and concern with the correct use of words in affecting student performance in accounting. Prior research is presented to support an expectation that verbal cues and descriptions are more important to female students than to male students in the effective use of imagery for recall of accounting information. Measurement of quiz performance in an accounting classroom setting in the USA is used to provide evidence regarding how language characteristics (accent and correct use of words) and classroom presentation method (media) affect student performance (recall) differently by gender. The findings indicate that at the beginning of the semester, concern with the correct use of words and presentation method may have contributed to poor performance for the quizzes of female students compared to male students. However, as the semester progressed, female performance was not significantly different from the performance of male students. This suggests that female students may have adapted to non-preferred instructor verbal characteristics and presentation method.