Response To: Teacher Classroom Strategies

In “Teacher's Classroom Strategies Should Recognize that Men and Women Use Language Differently”, Deborah Tannen highlights the issue of the current teaching method that is unsuitable for women because female students are more passive than male students. Hence, she feels that teaching should be conducted in a smaller class size. She begins by predicting the slightest probability that one would want to review his usual teaching method. She emphasises the weakness of the usual teaching method that it prejudices the woman’s side. She also tries to catch her reader’s attention by using a little bit informal language and positioning herself as one of the teachers who has experienced such a situation. Nevertheless, her stand is rather weak as she does not substantiate her argument with enough evidence. Furthermore, towards the end of the journal, Tannen could not clarify the relation of gender issue with the need of breaking down the class into smaller groups.

To start with, Tannen begins her article in an interesting note such that she is able to capture the attention of the audience. The beginning part, “When i research my book.. The furthest thing from my mind is re-evaluating my teaching strategies..” creates an awareness among her audience that reshaping regular habit is not easy. Tannen notices that altering conventional system is a challenge. Therefore, this introduction wants to lead the readers to be cognisant about one’s eagerness in ruminating whether the approach he uses to teach totally suits the students in general.

Tannen continues to explain the inconveniences felt by woman. To support her argument, she gives the background of the different ways of how men and women perceive things. She states clearly that “a girl has a best friend with whom she sits and talk... For boys, activities are central”. The statement brings the idea that women will be less likely to be active in the class participation which is unfortunate as the current teaching method mostly require an active participation from students. Tannen describes current way of teaching from her fellow male teacher’s story as “public display followed by argument and challenge”. Therefore, to lighten the burden of female students, one has to revise the teaching methods to cater to them.

To really grasp the target audience who are the teachers in general, Tannen uses a casual writing style rather than the formal one. With this kind of style, Tannen wants to highlight that she is not forcing the other teachers to amend their years of teaching style to be like hers. Instead, she is giving a picture of how the usual style is actually a bias for most of the woman. Having the instructors and teachers as her intended readers means they already read a plethora of critical writings beforehand. Thus a usual critical article may not leave a significant impact on them. In addition, her casual tone enables her to avoid a critical response as well as encourage other teachers to have another look at their teaching system. Furthermore, Tannen provides her personal experience while conducting a small experiment towards her students. Sharing her personal experience gives a better point of view that she also faces the same problem as others.

Nonetheless, Tannen fails to go further on the example of the case study. Although the given example is also supported by a statistical data, it is merely her own case study and it is just based on a single pilot study which is inadequate. The result may not be applicable to other contexts. There are also external factors that may cause such result in her case study such as family background or country background. This can be seen as her class have a diverse culture background. Besides, there is no proper explanation why she conducted the experiment in grouping her class according to degree, gender, and personality. Although her journal is presented in a casual tone, it does not mean that a proper source of research and facts can be ignored. Such a flaw should not be done in presenting a journal.

In particular, above all the discussion, Tannen does not successfully identify the root of the problem. From her case study, the main reason for the bias teaching method seems due to the inner personality from the student. This statement could be derived from the way Tannen explains that each student has his prefered way in interacting in each other. Regardless of the gender, some students prefer to raise hand while the others do not; some could easily create an immediate question while others will take times to realize it into words. It deviates from the topic where she is supposed to elucidate the relationship between differences in gender with the current teaching system. From this description, one would assume that the main reason for the current ineffective method of teaching is not because of the gender’s issue, but the incapability of teachers to cater all the different personality of each student in a big class size.

In summary, Tannen’s article gives an excellent argument to influence the readers. She manages to clearly pinpoint the inadequacy felt by the female students in current teaching method. The plot and writing style are arranged well to attract the readers. A casual tone chosen for the journal presents a friendly approach towards the target audience to generate greater enthusiasm in digesting her journal content.

Nevertheless, after thorough examination, Tannen overlooks the importance of supplying strong data to support her stand. She also does not further elaborate the importance of gender issue behind the current teaching system. Instead of elaborating the gender issue, the article gives the impression that without considering gender, each individual is unique so that a smaller class is needed to fully accommodate to them.