Deborah Tannen How Male And Female Students Use Language Differently Summary

The essay, “How Male and Female Students Use Language Differently”, written by

Deborah Tannen, discusses the difference of language used daily by males and females in the

classroom. Different language can sometimes depend on regional, ethnic, class backgrounds, and

even age and gender. Should there be a battle of the sex’s competition in the educational setting

of a classroom? Well, it has been said that women and men have diverse ways to communicate

through language, also connecting through the way they converse. Even though it is thought to

be said that women tend to talk more than men, that opinion varies. There are several ways to

predict that a woman’s persona differs from a man’s. Men are more open and willing with

discussion, while women have the tendency to

stay behind and communicate with the ones that
they are most comfortable with.
The study done by sociologists and anthropologists, Janet Lever, Marjorie Harness Goodwin,
and Donna Eder, shows that males and females communicate through language differently, when
placed into sex-separate peer groups.

As Tannen discusses in the article, “How Male and Female

Students Use Language Differently,” males are more open and upfront with voicing their

opinions while females are more silent and self-contained. Females are more likely to have one

best friend that she will open up to, however, a male will express himself to a group of

colleagues that he associates with. Females are more open with their personal secrets than males;

but they prefer a smaller group of people they are fond of. Tannen says that the “telling of

secrets, the fact and the way they talk to each other, that makes them best friends.” Males tend to

Jones 2

gather and communicate with larger groups related to the activities in which they participate in.

Therefore, males prefer to communicate in a more public atmosphere, becoming argumentative

and debatable, loving the fact of being challenged, to be able to express their knowledge, and

skills. Females express their emotions more often through laments than males. Men enjoy

playfully insulting colleagues, however; females love to sympathize with one another about

each
own problem and express their confidences.
Tannen describes the experiment that she performs in her classroom, where she permits her
students to analyze their own conversations in randomly selected groups of people. This was an
opportunity to the students to interact and discuss their point of view without embarrassment of
one another. She came to a conclusion that small-group interaction is vital to any debate class.
No matter how people are separated into groups for open debate, there will always be different
forms of communication throughout the diversity of people.