A Study On Gender Difference In Conversation Style Among College Students

This study attempts to explore gender-linked conversational styles in language use among undergraduates in the setting of Chinese English classroom. Based on the theory of Conversation Analysis, a survey of questionnaire and an analysis of tape-recording data in the EFL class are conducted. A systematic analysis is made concerning the following aspects:topic choice, amount of speech, turns and floors, interruption, back channel responses and conversational self-repair.According to the study, the author finds that the male students do differ a lot from female students in their conversation styles. Firstly, as to the topic choice, male students tend to talk more in the discussion of politics, economy and sports while female students prefer the discussion of entertainment, shopping, family and interpersonal topics such as their future plans and hobbies. Secondly, as to the amount of speech, on the whole, males utter a little bit more than females. But the topics and the ratio of sex in the group can influence the speech output of students. Thirdly, the total turns of speaking of male students and female students are also changing according to the different topics and the different ratio of sex in their group discussions. Fourthly, the total number of interruptions of male students is more than that of female students. However, in the mixed-sex group, female students are inclined to interrupt males more than males do. Fifthly, female students make more back channel responses than males. Finally, concerning the self-repair, female students use more self-repairs than male students in order to express themselves correctly.Based on the differences mentioned above, the author puts forward some suggestions for language teachers to improve the efficiency of college English teaching, especially the oral English teaching. Firstly, the mixed-sex group activities are necessary to be organized in the classroom discussions to arouse the students' enthusiasm for English learning. Secondly, topics are another important factor the teacher should pay attention to when they organize classroom activities. The teacher should try to select the topics which are favored by both male students and female students. Thirdly, in language classroom, the students should be taught some verbal strategies so that they can master some communicative skills and their communicative competence will be improved.