How Male And Female Students Use Language Differently Deborah Tannen Summary

In the first excerpt Deborah Tannen wrote “But What Do You Mean?”, she breaks down and classifies the conversational areas where men and women have the most difficulties communication. Tannen’s excerpt is written from a personal point of view, it is written within her daily workplace and based off actions or events she encounters between men and women. Tannen argues that men tend to be more confrontational when communication and women happen to approach confrontation in a subtle way. Men are direct and to the point, while women try to negotiate. In the excerpt Tannen breaks her argument into 7 sperate

Tannen says that another colleague that read her book, told her that he took “for granted the best way to deal with student 's comments is to challenge them”(Tannen para. 10) He noticed that the females in his class were quiet. He decided to begin class with an open discussion instead, he found more women began to speak up and women liked this better but men liked this less. The reason for this was men liked being challenged and most women thought of it as a public humiliation.

While she offers some thoughtful insight in regards to male and female conversational styles as related to the classroom, she seems to be too one sided. She focuses on how males in every situation dominate conversations more than females. Stating about a student in her class that, “this young man valued the experience of being attacked and challenged publicly. Many, if not most, women would shrink from such ‘challenge,’ experiencing it as public humiliation” Tannen generalizes this phenomenon to apply to all males and females without offering any tangible evidence. She makes several such assumptions and statements that are not supported by adequate proof, relying more on stereotypes than concrete facts. For instance, she assumes that the audience has experienced participating in a classroom discussion, while it is possible that some of the audience have not. Classroom debates are not practiced in every educational system. Moreover, most of her assumptions are based on the findings from her own class experience only whereas adding accounts from other classrooms would have aided in convincing the audience. This is because not all classrooms are identical. Differences are evident from classroom to classroom. When Tannen does include opinions from her contemporaries, they are not related to the main idea of gender-based conversational

John does not socialize with his classmates but he will communicate academically with one student. The seating arrangement was modified to allow these two students to sit adjacent to each other. These changes could foster social communication for John.

While I agree with Tannen that the more dominant voices in the class may intimidate the more quiet voices, I don’t necessarily think that it’s strictly directed towards females. I believe that the more aggressive voices come from the most comfortable and confident students. In high school most of the comfortable voices were male, which is why they spoke up first. Although males could also stray away from speaking at times, it affected females more on average. When the author presented this argument my eyes were opened to something that I was a part of and could relate to, strictly in high school. Others may have different experiences but Tannen nailed it perfectly for me.

That’s where I become reluctant to recommend Deborah Tannen’s teaching strategy. Looking back on my public education experience I can think of a lot more exceptions to this description of how boys and girls use language differently than agreements. Again, I’m relying on personal experiences and I can of course also recall instances where men have dominated a classroom discussion. However, for me to say that all boys dominated girls during classroom discussions in Phoenix, AZ during the last stretch of the 20th century or that all girls are reluctant to speak publicly outside of the comfort of their peer group in Honolulu, HI during the beginning of the 21st century would be disingenuous and could probably be attributed to an expectancy bias.

Ebony, a university student, finds herself in two classes, each with their own unique atmosphere. Interpersonal Communication comes first and is taught by Professor Gardner, who has been teaching for 20 years. Organizational Communication is her second class, taught by Professor Morgan, who is younger than Professor Gardner. Each professor has a different style of teaching and opinion on how students learn most efficiently. Professor Gardner sets out his expectations, rules of conduct, and strict no-technology policy on the first day of class; he values structure and consistency for his students. Professor Morgan does not present rules for her class; she does not mind if students come in late or leave early, and appreciates the use of technology for the purpose of adapting the learning environment for each student. Professor Morgan values freedom and self-responsibility for her students. Ebony loves Interpersonal Communication, and notices that the students, when provided with structure, tend to thrive, communicate freely, and connect with other students right away. There is a lot of laughter involved, and most everyone knows each other’s names. In Organizational Communication, however, Ebony feels lost and out of touch with the path of the class. She finds that the spontaneity of Professor Morgan is more confusing than helpful; Ebony senses the disconnect between students, as most of them do not know each other’s names. Professor

In this model Marilyn brewer and Norman Miller (1984) suggest contact works best when group diversity are minimised. This allows others to see each other as individual rather than a group member. The Jigsaw classroom is a technique that is used in classroom settings to reduce racial biases. The teacher divides the children into groups and gives each child a segment of the topic they are covering that day. Each child presents their piece of the information they hold and this facilitates for others to present their information. This shows that each child holds a piece of the jigsaw. The teacher can follow similar steps and try applying this method to their lesson. Teachers to be aware of in order for this work, they need to be an equal number of both girls and boys in each

Each individual conveys their ideas in unique ways. Men and women in particular express themselves in drastically different ways. In “How Male and Female Students Use Language Differently,” Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, experiments with the causes of classroom dynamics. Tannen opens her discussion by exploring the beginning stages of learning communication skills and then fast forwards to adulthood. Tannen uses research from sociologists and anthropologists such as Lever, Goodwin, and Eder as well as insight from Walter Ong to add credibility and to create a foundation for her explanation of the causes of classroom dynamics. Tannen expands on this research from cultural and behavioral professionals by creating an experiment in her own classroom to demonstrate that communication skills learned and cemented in younger years, combined with a “ritual opposition” setting, produce classroom dynamics.

When you read the title, “How Male and Female Students Use Language Differently,” you may think that the article is about the way female and male students talk to one another. Deborah Tannen’s article is actually about how female and male students participate during class; from raising hands to just plainly speaking out loud. Tannen is a teacher but she states “the furthest thing from my mind was my teaching strategies,” (Tannen 369) considering how female and male students participate in class differently. Since Tannen had recently only focused on female and male language through conversation in her article “You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation,” she decides to focus on her own class and the way her students participate

Through her use of the rhetorical devices of personal experience, ethos, and comparison, venerated Georgetown linguistics professor Deborah Tannen persuaded me to concede with her argument that males and females communicate differently in the classroom, as indicated in her 1991 article How Male and Female Students Use Language Differently. In this composition, she emphasizes that because of intersexual differences in utilizing the spoken word in class differently, instructors, including herself, consider reevaluating their teaching strategies. In her case, revising the approach involved building experience through closely monitoring her classes and collaborating with colleagues.

Sex and gender play a big part in american society today and are often misconstrued. These two topics have become progressive as people are starting to express their gender and sexuality in ways other than what is and has been considered the norm. Many people believe that sexuality and gender are synonymous with one another. Gender is socially constructed while sex is biologically determined. In society’s past, Americans often strayed away from discussing controversial topics, but with the rise of different ways of addressing people, it is deemed more important to understand. Along with the blurred lines of gender and sex comes sexuality, who someone is attracted to sexually. When people stray from society’s heteronormative mindset, they are often faced with many more challenges than the average hetero man or woman. People often have the preconceived notion that if something does not concern them, then they should not be involved in it. A person who could be your neighbor, co worker, or even child, may have to deal with the troubles of people confusing their gender identity with their sex. While also facing challenges that deal with the sex of the person they choose to love. Learning the difference between gender and sexuality will open the eyes of many people and see how the two are different but relate to one another very much.

This process involves acting out what we believe to be society’s perception of what it means to be masculine or feminine (West and Zimmerman, 1987). The initiation before a man and woman begin dancing together is perhaps the clearest example of individuals ‘doing gender’. In this space, men are almost exclusively responsible for initiating conversation or some sort of physical interaction. The idea that men must be aggressive and women must be passive only reaffirms our gender stereotypes. This relationship is even more evident in fraternities, as there seems to bee an even wider range in terms of what is deemed to be appropriate behavior (Boswell and Spade, 1996).

In the process of going through an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter training program, one cannot help but notice a substantial gender gap. For every fifteen females, there are (perhaps) one or two males. Research has suggested that females make up around 85% of the ASL interpreting field (RID, 2014). Does this significate gender differential have an effect on clientele message? This paper hopes to explore that precise question. Through the course of this paper, I will uncover the differences in communication styles between males and females. Additionally, I conducted a survey of interpreters as well as clients in order to gain insight into the possible effects this differential has on clientele. The online qualitative survey allowed me to compare and contrast responses from a small sample of interpreters and clients. The most significant information I gathered related to awareness. Interpreters, it seems, are aware that their gender impacts the client’s message and are taking steps to remedy that. I plan to explore some of these potential solutions within this paper.

She studied ethnic groups, which speak the same language using different styles, and found that the effect of gender on communication is miniscule compared to the effect of culture and socialization. In her research, Tannen asserts that the basic uses of conversation by women are to establish and support intimacy; while for men it is to acquire status. These styles and motives for communicating represent different cultural upbringings, and one is not necessarily better than the other. However, she also notes in her findings that men tend to interrupt more and ask questions less. In fact, the female tendency to ask more questions sometimes results in receiving lower grades from male professors who view frequent questioning as proof that a student knows less than her male counter parts.