How Male and Female Students Participate in Class

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.

To truly understand the problem, Tannen reveals that one would have to understand the different personalities in both men and women and how they act. Tannen illustrates that boys have a personality that most girls don’t really understand. She reveals that, “Boys are based on less talking, and more on doing things together. Boys’ groups are larger, more inclusive, and more hierarchical, so it makes them struggle to avoid the subordinate position in the group” (Tannen 409). She emphasizes that this could very likely be a reason why women complain that men don’t listen to them. Men don’t really like to listen, because it makes them feel low and unimportant. In the case for women, women are more talkative than men. “For women, intimacy is the fabric of relationships, and talk is the thread from which it is woven” (Tannen 409). To women, communication is the key to a healthy relationship. Women like to express their feelings more and get support from their listeners. In her experiment, with second and sixth grade boys and girls, she observed how girls tended to share stories and talk about the problems they had. The boys, on the other hand, would tease, tell jokes, and talk about many topics over the period of time. The boys had a tendency to jump from topic to topic many times. However, women see this as a sign of not listening

It is no secret that, in general, boys and girls differ in their learning styles. Capitalizing on these differences could advance classroom performance. With on-going concerns about student success in school, any changes in the classroom that could increase student achievement should be considered. Recognizing the learning differences between boys and girls, one of the changes that could be instituted is single-gender classrooms.

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.

Throughout history, it is seen that women were always treated like they were less than a male. While a great amount of women hid and did what they were told, some women fought for their rights and took a stand. For some women, this included getting a medical degree, or doing public speaking. During the 1800’s, there were multiple women that fought for women's rights by sticking up for themselves and not letting people down grade them for being female.

In the early 1800’s people always thought that the only job appropriate for a woman was being a teacher. They had this image of women for many many years until a young lady named Mary Edwards Walker came along. She challenged this idea and changed it for all the women in history after her.

As a woman myself, it is hard to imagine a time when I would not have been allowed to attend college, let alone be writing this paper. As children most of us heard stories from our grandparent’s about what life was like they were young. I can remember laughing at the thought of “walking up hill both ways” to get to school. With the liberties American Women have today, it is easy to take for granted everything the women before us fought so hard for. It is easy to forget the treatment they suffered in their struggle to bring us to today. In this paper we will examine the lives, struggles, and small victories of women that have led us to

Unable to persue her passion of teaching, she again searched for an outlet for her compassion. Soon , she took up a position with the Department of the Interior as a clerk. What was important about this particular job is that she was one of the first women to persue this career. “The old records of the Department of the Interior, disclose her there by 1855 and show that she was one of the first Government clerks of her sex, if indeed not the first.”3 Clara made another stride for women when she accepted a position working for the Departments of Washington working with patents. She wrote the following in response to this historical event: “I accepted and thus became as I believe the first woman who entered a public office in the Departments of Washington in her own name drawing the saleary over her own signature. I was placed equal wth the male clerks at $1400 per year. This called for some criticism and no little denunciatoin on the part of those who foresaw dangerous precedents.”4 Unfortunately, her male coworkers did not agree that a woman belonged in the workplace, especially in the government. Every day she was terrorized by these men. “Insulting remarks, whistles, and catcalls increased in number and maliciousness. And yet, so excellent was she as a copyist that with an increase of salary she was advanced over her detractors to expert work on original prints, patent abridgments, and caveats.” 5 Clara

Since the beginning of time, those not classified as men have faced many struggles. This wide group ranges anywhere from children to women. The working boom in America is one of many factors that is accountable for the limitations these groups face. These powerless groups did not have enough voice, originally, to demand equal treatment under the law and society. Therefore, many reform groups arose during American history to encourage society to call to action the freedom we all enjoy and protect today. In her speech given before the National American Women Suffrage Association in Philadelphia, Florence Kelly utilizes anaphora, rhetorical questions, an empathetic yet sarcastic tone, and selection of detail to emphasize unfairness in working conditions for children and to encourage her audience to take feminist action.

She believes that because women generally have smaller groups of friends, they feel uncomfortable talking in areas with more people. And since men use their words to fight for a higher place in their social hierarchy, they feel more comfortable arguing in a large group. While this may be true for some cases, Tannen completely disregards the fact that women also use words to fight for dominance. Girls are simply more discrete about it. Instead of arguing and “exchanging playful insults and put-downs,” (Tannen 2) women talk behind each others backs and ruin each other’s appearance that way. Arguments with females are much more verbal than physical as they can be with guys. So if anything, women use language to argue and debate more than men. This completely goes against Tannen’s original thought that women don’t use language to compete, and it doesn’t explain why women talk less in class. At a young age parents tell little girls to be “quiet and ladylike.” This creates the stereotype that girls do not argue or debate. Girls simply do not participate in large group debates because they are raised to be calm and soft

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 the excerpt "How Male and Female Students Use Language Differently" originally published in a book called You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation in 1990, Deborah Tannen observes that one method of teaching a class does not necessarily work for all other classes. In her research, classrooms are dominated by male students, because most instructors use a teaching method called ritual opposition which exhibits "public display followed by argument and challenge" that cater to male students more than female students. Most instructors believe that classroom participation, such as contributing to classroom discussions, will determine students' success. Consequently, in an environment where men express themselves as a dominant figure,

It was noted that a majority of the questions were answered by males, while only a few female responded to the professor. A quote in Riche’s essay, Claiming an Education provides a possible reason for this finding, “the intelligent woman who denies her intelligence in order to seem more “feminine”, or who sits in passive silence even when she disagrees inwardly with everything that is being said around her” (Riche, 2007). This could potentially explain why the females in the attended class choose to keep to themselves. But, Bromley mentions how “[she] sees many young women in [her] classes…I see young women as strong, sensitive, dynamic, outspoken, smart, independent…” (Bromley, p.3). This being said, Riche’s idea and assumption about why females would choose to keep to themselves during class, is slowly fading away; young women are starting to be more involved enriching in their

51). There are some people that believe there are behaviors that reflect socialization: girls are praised for cooperation and compliance, while boys are rewarded for activity and competition. The thought that many girls prefer to learn one way, and many boys another, suggest a useful generalization that can present information about gender that can help a teacher plan more successfully. Based on this information as an effective teacher it is important to include competition and cooperative activities.

Sometimes most boys sing during class and usually distracts all the girls from working and listening to the teacher. It is also hard to focus when the boys in the other class tap on the desks boys usually like to annoy girls. Since girls like to have quiet, boys usually take that away from them by distracting them with sounds. Second, Is that a girl from one class and a boy from the other class meets up and they like each other. 65 percent of the girls in the class meet up with boys every day and some people in the class think that it is weird. Most of the girls in the class like to hang out with boys every day and some boys in the class can’t get their work done because the girls like them. In conclusions this tells how the boys can be more smarter physical and stronger Than the girls. This also tells how they shouldn't have gender based classes. Third, is that it is hard to communicate to friends in the other class. 90 percent of all girls and boys can’t communicate to each other in the classes every day. It is also hard when girls get paired up with girls everyday and boys get paired up with boys everyday. Sometimes you have to [air up boys with or girls with boys because you have to spread skill level smartness and intelligence