This paper seeks to resolve certain questions pertaining to therelationship between gender and second language vocabulary knowledge. One question weexamine is whether female and male ESL students at the University of California at Irvinediffer significantly in their knowledge of academic vocabulary in English as measured byscores on the Test of Academic Lexicon (TAL). One hundred ninety-two freshman universityESL students participated in the study. A t test, used to investigate differences in theTAL scores of males and females, reveals that the males performed better on the TAL than thefemales (t = 3.32, p = .001). Analyses of covariance were used to examinequestions pertaining to the effect of gender on the TAL, controlling for the possible effects ofthe students' verbal Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores, length of residence in theUnited States, and age of arrival in the United States. In all cases, gender remainssignificantly related to the results of the TAL when controlling for the other variable: forverbal SAT scores, F(1,181) = 5.86, p < .05; for length of residence,F(1,187) = 9.64, p < .01; and for age of arrival in the United States,F(1,185) = 10.22, p < .005. Neither the present study nor the genderliterature reviewed suggests that gender itself causes differences in the TAL scores.In analyzing the results, we consider possible explanations for the males' better TALscores related to reading habits, interactional styles, educational backgrounds, andcultures.