Deborah Tannen How Male And Female Students Use Language Differently Summary

Breshia B. Donald

Instructor C. Shackleford

English 1113, Section 101

31 August 2016

An Analysis of “How Male and Female Students Use Language Differently” Deborah Tannen’s article “How Male and Female Students Use Language Differently” analyzes how males and females act differently. The analysis explains how boys and girls makes decisions, how male and female students participate in class, gives details about the observations she gathers from her experiment, and whether the experiment is tested properly. Males and females are different. Their social skills and their interaction in their day to day life are completely different. Males and females make life decisions based on different characteristics. “Typically, a girl has a best friend with whom she sits and talks, frequently telling secrets. It’s telling secrets, the fact and the way they talk to each other, that makes them best friends. For boys, activities are central: their best friends are the ones they do things with” (Tannen 192). Tannen observed one of her colleague’s classes, and compared their teaching

She theorized the following based upon the notes she has taken: “Male students are more likely to be comfortable attacking the readings and might find the inclusion of personal anecdotes irrelevant and ‘soft.’ Women are more likely to resist discussion they perceive as hostile, and, indeed, it is women in my class who are most likely to offer personal anecdotes” (Tannen 193). She performs an experiment with her class based on her theory. Ms. Deborah Tannen uses a different teaching tactic to see if her theory can be proven to be true by splitting her students into small groups. “I broke the class into small groups to discussed the issues raised in the readings to analyze their conversational transcripts. I devised three ways of