My response to Tannen, “Teacher’s Classroom Strategies.”

In this article, Tannen pointed out the difference between the conversational style of men and women and she is calling for the need to restructure our daily teaching strategy so that we will be able to consider the difference tendencies of both genders.

The intended audience of the article is likely to be educators since this article is published in the Chronicle of Higher Education. I like the fact that Tannen has adopted a more narrative style of writing and informal tone in this article. I feel that this will appeal to her intended audience as it will position her as a fellow colleague who is trying to share her experience rather than a critic. Rather than including abstract in the article, I feel that Tannen’s style of writing will help encourage her audience to be more accepting of her views.

Tannen had observed that men generally dominate class discussion in conventional classrooms and I agree with her that this is related to the different communication pattern of the men and women. Men are more adapted to speaking in a public setting whereas women are more comfortable with speaking in private. With the call for gender equality in many modern societies, we are losing awareness of the difference between men and women. As a result, we often neglect the differences between the two genders and assume that men and women can be treated equally. Tannen also highlighted our oblivion to gender difference in the article through her examples of her discussion with her colleague. The examples show that the conventional way of teaching which involves debate style discussion has been so naturalized in our culture that it is often thought to be the most suitable method for teaching the students. Failure to recognize that the debacle style of discussion is more familiar and favorable for men highlights the fact that we do not understand the difference between men and women most of the time. Hence, I agree with Tannen that changes need to be made to classroom strategies to accommodate the differences between men and women.

However, some may argue against Tannen that her call for the restructuring of classroom strategies is suggesting women’s inability in adapting to the classroom setting and speaking in public. The change in classroom strategies to accommodate the women’s need may also seem like we are favoring the women. And this may appear to some people that we taking one step back from achieving gender equality and fair treatment. This leads me to the next point highlighted by Tannen which I strongly agree. In response to this, Tannen pointed out that equal treatment is not achieved unless the subjects of treatment are the same. Hence, the idea of unfair treatment is invalid. Clearly, if we want to achieve true gender equality, the way to go in the classroom would be to accommodate for the differences of both men and women instead of only accommodating the men in our conventional way of teaching. In my opinion, we need to recognize that men and women are equal but different. Hence, I will agree with Tannen that we need to find more diverse methods to serve the diverse students in the classroom.

All in all, I find Tannen successful in stating her case. As highlighted earlier, her narrative style of writing and informal tone made her article more persuasive for her intended audience as she seems to be sharing her own experience as a teacher in the article. This enables the readers of the article which are mostly educators to relate and accept her views. Besides that, Tannen made reference to the work of other professionals when discussing the difference in conversational styles between men and women. This adds credibility to her article as it shows that other people are thinking about the issues raised by her as well. It also shows that her ideas are valid. Lastly, Tannen also included her own research in the article to illustrate the idea that the social context influences the conversation style of people. I feel that she has made a good choice by carrying her research in the form of a case study. Moreover, her case study was carried out in a classroom setting which is a typical situation that I am sure most of the readers of the article are able to relate to and thus, making the article more engaging for most of the readers. Although we are unable to derive any general trend or draw any definite conclusion from the case study, I do feel that her case study has highlighted some important points and get readers thinking about the difference in conversational style of men and women. Hence, I would say that Tannen has succeeded in delivering her intended message and she has reached out to her audience in an effective way.