Reading response to "The Power of Talking"

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Recommended: Differences between language and gender

Linguistic style is the way people express their mean and to understand the words of others, and it is influenced by many elements, such as experiences in childhood, cultural background, and position in the workplaces. The central idea of this article is that different linguistic styles of people not only cause different results for men and women in workplaces, but also lead people to misunderstand others in communication.
In childhood, boys are encouraged to get higher positions in the group, for which they are supposed to present their abilities and knowledge as much as possible. Boys who have high status in their group will be viewed as leaders, and leaders should give orders to other low-status boys. In contrast, linguistic styles of girls are different from boys. Girls have to put themselves in the inferior position and avoid embarrassing or frustrating others, otherwise, they will get negative responses from other girls. The way people communicate with others will gradually become their own linguistic styles, and will bring significant influences to their career.
In the workplace, the differences in linguistic style make men and women have distinct performance. Men’s linguistic style encourages them to catch as many opportunities as possible to present their abilities, and what men learn from childhood enables them to speak out their ideas and thoughts in an acceptable and understandable manner. Since men actively demonstrate their abilities, they are going to be given more credit by colleagues and be promoted by their bosses. On the other hand, girls believe appearing stronger than others will make others feel embarrassed or frustrated, which affects the girl's reputation negatively. Girls are unaccustomed to give orders to...

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...ve that I lost mark just because my paper did not meet the professor’s expectation. In fact, I did misunderstand the professor’s guideline about focusing on only one main idea in one paragraph. However, I eventually realized and admitted the fact that I did miss the points after I had a talk with Dr. Mittoo. When I argued that I followed his requirement for sure, he just asked me some simple questions, and he gave me time to figure out the answer. After I found the answers to his questions, I had to admit that I did miss some points. And then, Dr. Mittoo told me what the right ways were to do the assignments. In this case, I admit that I had faults in the writing assignment, and I am fully convinced that my paper did not answer the professor’s questions. I now believe admitting mistakes can help me learn and improve myself, rather than it being a signal of weakness.

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