Suzanne Howard
Reference #13
Teacher’s Classroom Strategies Should Recognize that Men and Women Use Language Differently by Deborah Tannen
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I. Girls and boys learn to use language differently in their sex separate peer groups. (Researchers: Janet Lever, Marjorie Harness Goodwin, and Donna Eder)
A. Girls
1. Typically, a girl has a best friend with whom she sits and talks, frequently telling secrets.
2. It is this telling of secrets and the way that they talk to each other that makes them best friends.
B. Boys
1. Activities are central.
2. Their best friends are the ones that they do things with.
3. Tend to play in larger groups that are hierarchal.
a. High-status boys give orders and push low-status boys around.
b. They are expected to use language to be center stage: by exhibiting their skill, displaying their knowledge, and challenging and resisting challenges.
II. Women who go to single-sex schools do better in later life.
A. Why is this?
1. When young women sit next to young men in classrooms, the males talk more.
2. This does not mean that all men talk more in class or that all women talk less in class, just that a greater percentage of discussion time is taken by men’s voices.
3. Speaking in the classroom is more similar to boys’ early language experience because this usually involves speaking in front of a large group, many of whom are strangers.
4. Many classrooms use debate-like formats for teaching, in which boys are more familiar than girls
III. There are contrasting verbal rituals for men and women that seem to hold true across cultures.
A. Women in completely unrelated cultures (for
example,
B. Men do not take part in laments. Their verbal ritual: a contest, a war of words in which they compete with each other to devise clever insults.
C. Tannen noticed that she could see these two styles in American conversation.
1. Many women bond by talking about their troubles.
2. Many men bond by exchanging insults and put-downs, and other sorts of verbal sparring.
D. Examples
1. Male colleague: “I never thought of this, but that’s the way I teach: I have students read an article, and then I invite them to tear it apart. After we’ve torn it to shreds, we talk about how to build a better model.”
2. Tannen: “What did you find useful in this? What can we use in our own theory building in our own methods?”
IV. Why men speak more in the classroom
A. Men find the “public” classroom setting more conducive to speaking, whereas most women are more comfortable speaking in a more intimate setting.
B. Men are more likely to be comfortable with the debate-like form that discussion may take.
C. Another reason is the differences in attitudes about their roles as students.
1. Men assume that it is their job to make contributions to class discussions.
2. Women, on the other hand, don’t want to dominate discussions.
a. Tannen’s female students tell her that if they have spoken up once or twice they will hold back because they do not want to dominate.
b. If they have spoken a lot one week, they will be silent the next.
V. Tannen’s experiment
A. Tannen broke her class up into small groups.
1. By the degree program they were in
2. One by gender
3. One by conversational style: Asian students, fast talkers, and quiet students
B. Results – She considered her experiment a success.
1. Everyone in the class found the small groups interesting, and no one indicated that he/she would have not preferred to break into groups.
2. Many of the quieter students felt that they were more comfortable with talking more frequently.
C. Tannen’s beliefs
1. Small-group interaction should be a part of any class that is not a small seminar.
2. Having students become observers of their own interaction is a crucial part of their education.