Deborah Tannen Why Women Speak In Class

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I came from a high school where my closest friends were loud, and extremely prideful like me. Our pride wouldn’t allow us to lose to each other in any event. Needless to say, if any of my buddies and I shared the same class we would compete for everyone’s attention by out witting each other in classroom debates. Deborah Tannen claims that men and women communicate differently in class. She states that a greater percentage of discussion time in class is taken up by men. In my high school this couldn’t have been more accurate. “One reason men speak in class more than women is that many of them find the ‘public’ classroom setting more comfortable to speaking, whereas most women are more comfortable speaking in private to a small group of people they know well” (Tannen).
Women are therefore more likely to converse with individuals they have previous engagements with, according to Tannen, in contrast to men who are typically comfortable with talking in a group setting regardless. I however disagree with Tannen that men talk more. Pretend that Tannen does not mention men or women in the quote mentioned above. All you learn is the more comfortable speakers are going to speak up, in contrast to the one’s that feel more comfortable to speaking to their small group. This shows us that the most comfortable and confident students …show more content…

College has a feeling that what you say must be educated and intelligent, in contrast to high school. Students often blurted out whatever came to mind. At the beginning of freshman year in college everyone is new, generating an uncomfortable feeling at first. Therefore, on the topic of group discussion the aspect of gender is a non-factor. Group discussion is going to be led by who is most willing to speak up, otherwise the most comfortable or even confident