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Implications of gender on communication
Implications of gender on communication
Similarities of men and women communication
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“Men are from Mars, women are from Venus” as the famous saying of John Gray goes. It is believed men and women are nothing alike in almost every aspect. In Deborah Tannen’s essay “Gender in the classroom: Teacher’s Classroom Strategies Should Recognize that Men and Women Use Language Differently” she focused on how men and women differ when it comes to communicating, with emphasis on how it effects to how men and women behave in the classroom. Tannen points out “a greater percentage of discussion time is taken by men’s voices.” (2) She tells us why this is a disadvantage to the women in the classroom. She then continued to separate the two genders into their given stereotypes. Girls tend to separate themselves from large groups; they talk amongst …show more content…
She analyzed conversations among her students to find out what helped them in becoming engaged in the classroom discussion. The class she chose as her subject had eleven women and nine men. Tannen said that she observed the class for a good amount of time when she concluded that almost all the men talked in class occasionally. The student who talked the most in class was a woman, but then she mentions almost half of the women did not speak at all in class. Tannen decided to divide her class in ways where she could prove her thesis statement that having both genders in the same classroom is an issue. She analyzed the students, separated them into three groups that are relevant to each, from their degree, gender, and the conversation style that she observed from each student. Naturally, she focused on how the all-woman group became talkative once the men were gone. At this point of her essay, she focused too much on what she was trying to prove with her thesis statement rather than really giving the readers to consider the other side of the story. As Tannen goes on with explaining the experiment she conducted in class, she started to divert with including the ethnicity of some students. The foreign students tend to talk less despite what gender, therefore counting the validity of their contribution out. The information provided towards the end of the essay started to become irrelevant. This part of her essay was very weak, showing some obvious bias as she was sharing the information
... it is worth noting that though males dominated females during class discussions, there were instances when I witnessed women cut off men’s statements, uprightly expressing their disagreement. There were also cases when women explained more thoroughly the concepts recited by men. A few female students have also interrupted our male teacher in Accounting just to clarify points and ask questions.
Sunderland, J. (2000). New Understandings of Gender and Language Classroom Research: Texts, Teacher Talk and Student Talk. Language Teacher Research Journal, 4, 149-173.
In Deborah Tannen's essay, "Gender in the Classroom: Teachers Classroom Strategies Should Recognize That Men and Women Use Language Differently, she talks about the ways that male and female students participate in different exercises in the classroom. She also describes the way boys tend to interact by throwing hard words and on the other hand girls talk in smaller groups. Girl shares everything with their best friend.
Communication between men and women is a constant comparison of differing and many times opposite forms of reasoning. But should these differences hinder our ability to communicate with the opposite sex? There are many differing opinions concerning this topic. While trying to understand our differences we have lost site of the fact that somewhere in our conflicting thought patterns and methods of communication is the challenge and intrigue that attracts us to the opposite sex. Rather than seeing our communication diversities as obstacles we should consider them challenges that draw and keep our attention. You do not need to be an expert on human behavior to appreciate gender classified language and its effects on male female relationships, however many experts have attempted to tackle the issue.
Gender differences are influences on gender behavior in the way that one must fit through the assumptions and inevitable confusion to distinguish the reality of the assumption. Men and women are obviously different inherently, but not in what they can and cannot do. Men and women are different and have different roles because this is society presented them to the world. Women have the most difficulty getting through these complicated times. There should be equality among all men and women of all races and ethnicity. This is a never-ending issue. We as a society should always know and act on the importance of gender roles, gender equality, and challenges with education in developed and developing countries.
One of Tannen’s main claims is that in the classroom setting, males engage in more conversation than females do. She agrees
According to Leonardo Sax, the founder of the National Association for Single-Sex Public Education, “...whenever girls and boys are together, their behavior inevitably reflects the larger society in which they live” (Stanberry, 3). (1) It is a part of nature for girls and boys to socialize and get prepared for the real-world and develop skills to interact with another gender. (2) In the real-world it is conventional for both genders to work together and communicate everyday. (3) According with the journal “Forbes”, when students are separated by gender, they miss an opportunity of working together with different perspectives and developing their own, new, and unique thoughts as well as ideas (Saunders, 1). (4) Advocates often argue for schools to be a reflection of a ‘real’ world to prepare young adults for the future (Jackson, Ivinson, 15). (5) When both genders learn together, they learn from one another and benefit from absorbing various learning styles (Saunders, 4). (6)
First off, Tannen makes questionable assumptions about how men and women speak in the classroom setting. Tannen says “It is simply that a greater percentage of discussion time is taken by men’s voice.”(pg. 315) While Tannen says this I question how she got to this conclusion without any sorts of evidence and it
of a classroom? Well, it has been said that women and men have diverse ways to communicate
In the essay "How Male and Female Students Use Language Differently" by Deborah Tannen, she describes how females and males differ when they both use and respond to language or certain speech patterns, especially when the setting is in a classroom. The author notices how the males tend to act or be more aggressive and assertive with their language and action especially when in bigger groups they tend to compete when they voice their opinion. Opposite of the males, females are more delicate when they speak and when in bigger groups they hold back their voice but end up feeling more comfortable to talk in smaller groups more than likely with other females. Tannen tests her theories in her class and they seem
Same sex classes make it possible for teachers to cater to student needs in a more efficient way. In general boys benefit from hands on learning, but girls benefit from calm discussions (Mullins 3). Girls tend to doubt themselves while boys think they can do anything. Boys need to be brought down from the clouds while girls need to be dug out of a hole (Mullins 3). David Chadwell says, "Structure and connection are two key concepts when examining gender in the classroom. All students certainly need both, but it seems that teachers need to consider the issue of structure more with boys and the issue of connection more with girls" (7), and Kristen Stanberry’s research has shown, "Some research indicates that girls learn better when classroom temperature is warm, while boys perform better in cooler classrooms. If that's true, then the temperature in a single-sex classroom could be set to optimize the learning of either male or female students" (1). These observations further support the idea that same sex classrooms can cater to student’s...
Most people believe that boys receive more attention then girls. Male students seem to talk more then females during class. They also tend to call out answers and therefore are given more attention in one perspective. Teachers also do not correct girls as frequently because teachers think that it will hurt girls’ feelings. When teachers give boys more constructive criticism this stimulates more intellectual growth, (Kleinfield and Yerian, 1995). Female students favor to collaborate during conversations and like to build on other’s ideas.
In the present United States, a mixture of males and females make up a university classroom. In life, males and females have different conversational styles. The ways that they communicate to each other in a conversation, as well as how they communicate with their instructors and peers in the classroom. Although there is a combination of both genders in the classrooms, schools gravitate more towards using learning techniques that are more applicable towards men than women (Tannen 369). When teaching with a mixture of people that learn differently, it is difficult to have a certain technique to use that would help everybody in the same way. Yet it is important that equal opportunities are given to both genders that allows them to do their best and succeed in their academic careers. Educational professionals need to understand the conversational differences in gender and have better teaching strategies that fit both male and female conversational styles.
In terms of “genderlect” the language of women is mainly driven for making a relationship or connection with the person that is reading or listening to them (Lyons). Women like to, ask questions, avoid conflicts, and sometimes listen in which the reader is satisfied with the writings of the author (Lyons). Though this focus on connection is shown in writings it is also shown in public. If you notice in your classes that most women sit in front of the class than men, because they prefer to ask more questions than men do. Asking questions gives that teacher -student relationship that women seek. They try to avoid conflicts that generally go on because it can affect the relationship with their audience in a negative way. Also if you observe a conversation that goes on with two women or even a woman and a man, you will notice that the woman will “maintain eye contact, nod her head, and respond in some way” (402).
This experiment, even though it was conducted on a small scale, shows the changing gender roles that are being modified today by the upcoming generation. Although the students still had bits and pieces of gender stereotypes, they more so focused on the activities that Confederate A and Experimenter 1 stated they . Also, once they were all collectively in a group and they saw the jobs being written on the whiteboard, they realized various jobs that “were sexist.” The aggregate data shows that cooperatively students in this particular classroom had underlying gender roles, but were able to pick these roles out once seen. So even though they did have some stereotypical tendencies, this experiment demonstrated that their generation are moving past these gender