How Male And Female Students Use Language Differently By Deborah Tannen

In 1991, a linguist teacher by the name of Deborah Tannen published "Conversational Styles "in the Chronicle of Higher Education,a weekly newspaper for college professors ."Conversational Style"is the way we converse with one another.Tannen felt as if "small-group interaction should be a part of any class ",but rather than state facts to support her argument she relied on her expertise in public speaking& her own personal experiences to strengthen her point of view.Tannen felt that men accounted for an higher percentage than woman when participating in class discussion, because men are more comfortable speaking in a public setting than woman.Tannen stated"That men are more likely to be comfortable with the debate-like form"that commonly takes

Deborah Tannen, who is a professor of linguistics, says in her essay, "How Male And Female Students Use Language Differently", that after she made her book, “You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation” that one of the unintended benefits was that she gets to reevaluate her teaching strategies and see how male and females act differently in class. As you read through her essay you can tell that Deborah Tannen wants her readers to think about why males tend to speak more in discussions than females and the reason for this difference in the classroom and also how we can improve the classroom for both men and women.Although Tannen tends to get off topic and doesn 't have much evidence to back up some of her claims, she states

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

Education has always been the most efficient tool for success in the 21st century. Due to it, people become professionals in various spheres, and it also provides means for prosperity. People acquire knowledge in order to lighten challenges they face in everyday life. Education plays a vital role in shaping an individual’s success in personal life. It assists people in earning recognition and respect in social relations with others. It also impacts the development of personal skills and the future career. However, teachers are also important contributors to a person’s brighter future. Their role has always been indispensable in the educational process of every student. The purpose of this essay is to analyze the purpose and problems of education in Deborah Tannen’s article How Male and Female Students Use Language Differently. Although, there are major inequalities in the overall standards of today’s education, students, themselves, create imbalance through their conversation styles in the classroom settings.

Language is used all around the world. Men and women have various ways of using language. There are many factors in using language such as: regional, ethic, and class backgrounds; gender; and age (Tannen 214). Deborah Tannen “How Male and Female Students Use Language differently” elaborates on this topic adequately. Tannen elaborates male and female language patterns, the debate type teaching formats used in college classrooms, and the different male and female attitudes toward vocal expressions exercises used in the classroom that creates a dissatisfying environment for females. Ms. Tannen mainly focuses on the languages differences of men and women. She concludes that different classroom strategies need to be studied and applied in order to accentuate and improve student participation in the classroom from both males and females. In analyzing this paper, three things are evident. One must consider how men and women bond differently, how speaking in a classroom is more adaptable to men in a debate scenario, and how men and women communicate and participate in a group exercise

“Sex Differences” is an essay written by a professor of linguistics named Ronald Macaulay. In the essay, he pointed out that there were no gender differences regarding to language development. He talked about various stereotypes about how men and women speak. He also explains in depth about how social environment made an impact on the talking between men and women. He also concluded that those linguists who still believe in that theory only continue to do so even if what they found in their research is not statistically significant. In many ways, Macaulay’s essay is persuasive. Through this essay, one would agree with him that there is no different form of language in which women and men speak.

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.

o men talk more than women in a classroom setting? In “How Male and Female

This conversation shows how men and women communicate, but it doesn’t explain everything? Tannen provides us with her theory of genderlect styles to apply this information not only to our professional lives but also our everyday lives.

Deborah Tannen tackled this often glazed over topic in her essay “How Male and Female Students Use Language Differently.” The essay primarily focuses around Tannen’s experiences

In her July 2007 article “WHO DOES THE TALKING HERE?,” published in The Washington Post, Linguistic Professor Deborah Tannen expresses her expert insight to the common assumption that women speak more than men (356). According to Prof. Tannen, women, being concerned with building and maintaining relationships, use “rapport-talk” as opposed to men, who use more of a “Report-talk” style of communicating (357). The well-published author contends that merely counting words is insufficient for gaining understanding of the existing gender bias. However, we can gain (insight) to the differences in gender communication by analyzing “ when” people choose to speak, as well as, “why” people choose to speak (358).

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.

In order to be able to solve some of the problems associated with gender miscommunications, we should distinguish first between the two different types of communications: verbal communication and nonverbal communication. Verbal communication consists of messages expressed by linguistic means such as the use of intonation, the specific words we choose to say, and the way we are saying them. There are differences in females and males usage of language/verbal communication. As we might expect from traditional sex-role stereotypes, girls tend to establish more egalitarian same-sex groups. Girls use friendly groups as a training ground for cooperation. Boys view friendly conversation among their friends as training for verbal aggression. Females are more verbal, use three times more amount of words than males, they are much more descriptive and use more adjectives. Women are less direct in their communication style. As Prof. Tannen showed in one of her research, women are more indirect in answering questions depends on the situation. They answer questions the way they would like to be answered by men, which means more than just a yes/no answer. However, men answer the way they would like to be answered

How one communicates is also influenced by gender. Studies show that ones sex can place a person in a gender role expectation. Women and Men communicate differently and because sexual identity is defined through same sex parent or role model, women and men can get into gender role expectations. These expectations influence their perception attitudes and behavior that will result in a communication style. This early self-concept can effect each one's interpersonal relations. Women for instance are much-attached human beings they have very early identification with their mothers, and this can cause an on going pattern of role expectation. It can lead to interpersonal

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.