Deborah Tannen Analysis

Deborah Tannen, a linguistics and renowned professor discusses in, “How Men and Female Students Communicate”, the many unique ways that men and female students in her classes talk. In addition, Tannens primary focus is discussing why her female students are less vocal than her male students.

Tannen argues that women do better in groups of the same gender. Furthermore, Tannen claims that later on in life, females do better if they went to a school that is female only. Her reasoning behind this is because she believes that men in particular have an advantage of speaking in classes. (Tannen 369-370)

In the classes that Tannen taught, she noticed that men openly discuss and debate discussion questions, contrary, the females in her class are

relatively reticent. Tannens reasoning is that the females in her class are often not willing to discuss something they feel will make them look incompetent. But the reason the men in her class are willing to openly speak the questions is that society has given them an impression that they should take the lead in answering. (Tannen 369-370)
To solve the problem of female students not speaking in her graduate class, she put her class in groups. The groups that Tannen put her students in was different from typical groups in that she put everyone in groups based on race, gender, and if the person was introverted or extroverted. To her astonishment, she realized that the females in her class who rarely spoke, were actually talking more. (Tannen 372-373)
Tannen has worked on solving the problem of females being disadvantaged for years. Furthermore, she continues to work on making new ways to solve gender equality problem. In conclusion, Tannen advocates that to make classes equal-opportunity universities need to comprise of small groups, and place students in these groups accordingly. (Tannen 373)