Summary Of You Just Don T Understand By Deborah Tannen

There are an infinite number of ways to define what it means for one to be educated: a student that scores well on tests, one that has a higher level of introspective thinking, etc. Although, one method of determining intelligence that schools are gradually paying more attention to is how well one participates in class. In recent years, teachers have been encouraging students to participate in class discussion more, and even including participation as a graded assignment. However, many factors, such as gender and type of discussion, may affect how much a student will participate. In Deborah Tannen’s book, You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, she discusses how gender may play a key role in class participation.
For boys, it is clear that they thrive in discussions in which they have a goal of winning, such as a debate. They seek to disprove others and assert their own opinions to be proven right. On the other hand, girls perform much better in a more peaceful discussion that does not involve disproving others, but stating their opinion and reflecting on the topic with personal anecdotes. Tannen discusses this phenomenon by sharing an incident with a colleague. She says that her colleague had a method of discussion in which the class reads an article, then tears it apart, disproving the author’s claims. He then says that he tried Tannen’s method, which involved discussing the importance of the reading and in what ways it is useful, and noticed that the girls in his class that the girls clearly felt more comfortable with this approach than his usual debates. Notably, Tannen mentioned the fact that girls that attend all-girl schools are more likely to be more successful in life than those that attend co-ed schools. She believes that this is due to the fact that they not only feel more comfortable speaking in a different manner than men, but that they also feel more comfortable speaking to other woman. This is not because girls do not fight, but because, as Tannen says, “they don’t ritualize opposition.