The Different Conversational Styles Of Men And Women

Luc Brubaker
Professor Kovak
English 110
Reading Journal 3
17 September 2012
Reading Journal 3, Prompt 2
Especially in college, many students have a small window of interests and an even smaller window of subjects they actually want to learn about. No student gets the privilege to take all their favorite classes throughout their whole schooling career, so catering to the learning preferences of the students would be the best way for the students to stay engaged in subjects that they might “dislike.” Tannen and Nathan both touch on the different conversational styles of men and women, of the conversational styles in and out of the classroom, and how it has become a problem in the class room. Working more with the students’ styles and preferences is the key to closing the conversational gaps presented by Tannen and Nathan, and help students participate more in class, but it allows the students to feel more comfortable in their learning environment. During Nathan’s essay, she reflects back when she was able to view a college course through the students’ eyes, and what made it so appealing to students. One point that she touches on, was how the teacher walked in the room and how he would talk to the class. “The middle-aged professor strode into the room late, like a rock star, as students waited in anticipation. His course introduction, like his lectures to follow, was peppered with taboo words and intimate personal stories. After the first two mentions of “fuck-ing,” the nineteen-year-old next to me whispered, ‘This guy is so cool!’(Nathan 114).” The reason for this sense of “coolness” was because he possessed a similar conversational style of the students. Many students view teachers as always being proper and always having to be formal in the way that they talk, so when there is a teacher that speaks similar to the way students do(uses slang or curses), the students instantly become engaged because they can easily relate. Nathan also touches on the subject matter of the class and how it was so appealing to the students. The class was under the course name “Sexuality” so from the beginning college students would be engaged because they view that subject matter as a preference. Just by the teacher talking or acting like the students and teaching a subject that students feel as being a preference, students are more engaged and are prone to participate more often. The difference in conversational styles doesn’t just vary from the beginning of class from the end of class like Nathan points out, they also alter from gender. Not all students can comfortably speak in huge groups or with the class as a whole, so sometimes catering to the students’ preferences can not only help the students learn, but also bring out other students who don’t usually say as much. Tannen backs this up in an observation she noticed while running a little experiment with her class and she states, “I could see plainly from my observation of the groups at work that women who never opened theirs in class were talking away in the small groups(Tannen 319).” Some students shy away from big numbered discussions and just need to be with less people for them to really open up and pour out their thoughts. In this case, if the students were to be “challenged”, they would have to debate as a large number, which would only show what the students who aren’t afraid to talk have to say, rather than everyone in the class. The quote just shows how important it is to teach the way students want to be taught so they can actually participate in the exercise and feel comfortable doing it. Students’ preferences are not always unreasonable ideas that they think would be cool, they are usually ideas that really help maximize their education. While teachers think that challenging students “Sharpens their minds and helps them develop debating skills(Tannen 317),” this doesn’t always prove true for every student. Like what Nathan’s essay explains, the students’ preferences help the student stay more engaged, thus bettering their educational experience. It does no student any good if they just through a whole class and never say a word. The whole point of class discussions are get hear everyones input, but without catering to the students preferences, the teacher might not succeed with the goal.
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Cited Sources:

Nathan, Rebekah. My freshman year: what a professor learned by becoming a student. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005. Print.

Tannen, Deborah. Talking from 9 to 5: how women's and men's conversational styles affect who gets heard, who gets credit, and what gets done at work. New York: W. Morrow, 1994. Print.