Gender-Based Verbal Interactions In College English Classrooms

Language and gender has been a popular issue from the very beginning. The systematic and scientific study of language and gender has been prosperous since Lakoff's groundbreaking work entitled Language and women's place (1975). However, most of the studies of gender and language have been carried out with topics of conversational interactions in daily life, in conferences, at work or among family members in English-speaking societies. Relevant research on conversational interactions in English classrooms is still in its infancy, and relies on a very small body of data. Also, very little has been done from the new perspectives on language and gender concerning college English teaching in China. This study attempts to make some contributions to the understanding of gender and language in the field of applied linguistics.This study is the result of continuous work on classroom-based study, which involves an investigation among students and a case study of group discussions in class. Based on the theories of Coats, Tannen, Homles, etc. and the fundamental principles of classroom research, the author initiates 3 questions of exploration.(1) In what way do male students differ from female students in conversational interactions?(2) How do the differences affect college English teaching and learning?(3) How can the differences be used to foster classroom learning?Four steps of the investigation and the case study were designed in the research, with close consultation of a great number of instruments, quantitative data (questionnaire), classroom observations (audio-tape, transcription) and other literary references.After the data analysis and interpretative analysis of the outcomes acquired in the investigation and the case study, findings in the following several aspects arefinally obtained:The research shows that male students do differ from female students in conversational interactions in college English classrooms in some ways. By transcribing and analyzing the collected data, the author finds some differences between males and females in the following five discourse variables: topics, amount of speech, turns and floors, interruption, and back channel responses.First of all, male students are found to participate more than female students in the discussion of sports, politics, education, and love while female students prefer the discussion of entertainment, food, shopping, health, and jobs.Secondly, male students generally share a little greater amount of speech than female students. But topics and the ratio of males to females in a group play a crucial part in amount of speech. If the topic deals with female-favored topics like shopping and jobs, female students initiate more talking. If topics are male-oriented topics such as sports and social problems, male students will talk more. Male students and female students have no significant difference in amount of speech in the 1 male to 1 female situation. But if the ratio of males to females in a group is 2:1 or over 2:1, male students will make more statements.Thirdly, the turn taking and floor holding behaviors of male students and female students vary with topics. In the discussion of shopping, female students take much longer floor holding turns than male students do. In contrast male students will take longer holding turns than female students do in the discussion of sports. The ratio of males to females is also closely related with turn taking and floor holding. If more females and fewer males take part in the discussion, females will take a bit longer floor holding turns.Fourthly, on interruptions, the results are as follows: although interruptions rarely occur in classroom discussions, comparatively, male students interrupt others and get interrupted more frequently than female students in their own sex conversations; but they tend to be cooperative in mixed sex conversations. Female students seem to interrupt male students more than male students interrupt female students in mixedsex conversations.Fifthly, though classroom discussions are lacking in back...