Deborah Tannen How Male And Female Students Use Language Differently

Naja Gammage

Mrs. Shackelford

English 1113, Section 101

31 August 2016

An analysis of “How Male and Female Students Use Language Differently” Deborah Tannen is writer of many books about the way people speak to each other and she is a linguist at Georgetown University. She explains in her article, “How Male and Female Students Use Language Differently”, why male students talk more in class than female students. Deborah gives statistical evidence from her own research and evidence from other professors giving examples of different methods for figuring out how students react in class. Students do act a different way in class than they do out of class. Male and female students perform differently in a classroom setting because of who is in the class, what class it is, and what type of person the student is.

“When young women sit next to young men in classrooms, the males talk more” (Tannen 214). Male students do not understand the pressure female students feel when attempting to speak in class. Female students find it harder to speak in class because of the sense of being ignored or embarrassed may occur. Most teachers in certain classes require students to speak in class more. However, shy students will try their best not to do so unless the teacher asks them directly. Some female students will speak more than male students in certain subjects, and some male students will speak more in other subjects’ female students try to stay away from. “These different styles must make our classrooms wildly different places and hospitable to different students” (Tannen 215). The type of person the student is the reason why or why not he or she talk more in different