Gender In Class Room

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In her essay “Gender in the Classroom,” Deborah Tannen uses her own experiences as a college professor, the experiences of other professors, her research and writing, and the work of other social scientists to discuss why students behave differently from each other in the classroom. She concludes that three factors affect how students behave: (1) gender, (2) nationality and (3) past educational experiences. Gender plays a big role inside a classroom. Tannen explains that gender affects peoples behavior in different ways. She states, “So one reason men speak in the class more than women is that many of them find the 'public' classroom setting more conductive to speaking, whereas most women are more comfortable speaking in private to small group of people they know well” (227)Accoriding to her statement men are more outspoken then women since they rather speak in small groups. Tannen describes the way her students used to act when participating in class. According to Tannen, nationality is also a factor in how students behave. The culture of students can make a difference in the way they participate in class. Tannen writes that in her classes she was able to see different ethics and habits at work, meaning the different ways students worked. Tannen states, “With the exception of the three Asian men, all the men spoke in class at least occasionally. The biggest talker in the class was a woman, but there was also five women who never spoke at all, only one of whom was Japanese”(227). This clearly explains to us that being from a different country causes students to become timid or make them feel uncomfortable in speaking or sharing them idea with others. She used a Japanese student as an example to demonstrate to us what a difference it makes. This student was shy and barely spoke even when being in an all women group the Japanese student felt that she was unable to
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