Looking at sexism in ESOL materials and classroom methods

Looking at sexism in ESOL materials and classroom methods

Christopher E. Renner, RSA Dip, Med

Program Consultant, ESOL/Bilingual, Refugee, and Indian Education

Kansas State Department of Education

E-mail: <crenner@ksbe.state.ks.us>

(An earlier version of this article appeared in Perspectives,  the journal of TESOL-Italy.)

 

INTRODUCTION

 

            The only time my  education was interrupted was when I was in school.

                        - George Bernard Shaw

 

            Sexism is a system of beliefs and practices that affirm the dominance of men over women.  Apprehended by most people as “only natural,” sexism pervades social relations and institutions, affecting everything from people’s domestic arrangement to their career choices.  With the arrival of the feminist movement within English speaking countries, attention has been given to changing the structures which support and promote sexism within the society.  One of these structures is language.

 

            Gender is a salient distinction in English; its importance is underlined in ways so obvious we hardly notice them.  For example: men and women in English-speaking culture are given different personal names; have distinct address forms; are denoted by gender-marked pronouns; differing adjectives can be used to describe their attributes (women are “pretty,” men are “handsome”) and so forth.  These linguistic conventions encourage English speakers to pay attention to gender whether or not it is immediately relevant.

 

            Not only does English (or French, Italian, and Spanish) call attention to gender, it does so in a way that makes the masculine gender normative.  For example, the suffix “-ess” in waitress  identifies it as the exception or deviant case and can only denote a woman.  The two exceptions to this rule about occupational titles are nurse and prostitute.

 

            A similar pattern affects third person singular pronouns, “he” is prescribed for generic and indefinite use.  The item man, too, denotes both the male of the human species and the species as a whole, as well as a suffix used to form agent nouns and occupational term; e.g., foreman, fireman.

 

            Many feminists have claimed that the use of generic masculine terms is more than just a symbolic declaration of women’s lesser (deviant, invisible) status.  Some would argue that the use of the English generic masculine is more damaging to women’s interests; that it impedes communication and encourages discrimination.

 

            What has happened during the course of the last thirty years is that the questioning put forth by the feminist movement has lead some contemporary English speakers to interpret generic masculines as masculine rather than generic.  In conjunction with the other sociological changes that have occurred within the social fabric of English speaking societies, this interpretation of masculine generics referring to males is only a natural outcome, and the need to create a new linguistic structure that places both sexes on equal footing is taking place.  This process is called de-gendering.

 

            De-gendering is achieved through a variety of ways (Florent 1994, Rothblatt 1995).  The most common has been to replace masculine with ungendered terms, producing what is called inclusive language.  For example, man  as a label for the species becomes humanity or humankind; replace the suffix “-man” with “-person” or some more precise designation; e.g., firefighter; compound words using “man-” are replaced by synonyms (e.g., staffing or personnel for manpower; artificial or synthetic for man-made).  The pronoun problem is resolved either by pluralising whole sentences, (e.g., “any student wishing to consult his tutor” becomes “any students wishing to consult their tutors”), or -- in Britain and the US -- using “singular” they (“anyone wishing to consult their tutor should make an appointment...”) with disjunctions like he/she, her/his, etc., available if these genderless variants are for some reason unacceptable. 

 

            British English prefers “singular” they for the indefinite antecedents anyone, someone, everyone, no-one; indeed in this context it is often preferable to “he” on independent grounds, since indefinite pronouns may have a plural element in their meaning; such sentences as: “everyone came to the meeting and I was glad for his support” and “no-one brought his car since he knew there was nowhere to park it”  are bizarre, and only slavish adherence to the prescriptive norms of correctness could induce native speakers to use them.  In contrast there are some sentences with clearly singular constituents, where the co-occurrence of a plural pronoun (especially if it comes close to its antecedent and is in a form other than the subject case) may strike many native speakers as of dubious acceptability -- e.g., “The yuppie who snorts cocaine on their lunch break will soon have trouble supporting their habit,” which is more likely to be made gender neutral by judicious rephrasing or pluralisation.

 

            International text writers are becoming more attentive to the embedded sexism of the books they produce.  Sexism is the stereotyping of males and females on the basis of their gender; the oppression of women by society in the belief that gender is an indication of ability.  The research conduced by David Carroll and Johanna Kowitz (1994) will show us how sexism is overtly present in EFL/ESL texts, some of their findings include:

 

•     Male pronouns are more common than female pronouns, ranging from 2.55 - 3.84 to 1

 

•     Husband   is less common than wife   but, the possessive husband’s  is more common than wife’s

 

They also researched Key Word in Content concordance and found:

 

•     Rich, richest, poor, brave, short, bald, bad, lazy, important, famous, afraid, pleased  and happy  collocated exclusively with man/men

 

•     Strong, tall, young, old  and fat  collocated more strongly with man/men  than woman/women

 

•     Angry  collocated more strongly with women/women than with man/men

 

•     Beautiful, pretty  and busy  collocated exclusively with woman/women.

 

            They conclude that in the 22 adjectives they studied, 18 were used for men, while only nine were used for women.  Only 6 were used to describe both men and women. 

 

            Based on frequency counts, the most important adjectives used to describe women are: busy, beautiful, pretty   and tall.   Women are never described as: important, famous, rich, poor, afraid, pleased or happy.

 

            Similarly, the most important adjectives used to describe men are: poor, rich, young, old, strong, tall and fat.  Men are never described as busy, and they are relatively unlikely to be described as angry

 

What message is given to learners who are taught from these books? 

 

            Women are busy being tall and beautiful.

 

            Men are: poor young strong and tall; or: rich old strong and fat, or a combination of these adjectives. 

 

The importance is this message is that men aquire money and power, or the lack of money and power, while women’s role within the society has nothing to do with this reality.  This is blatant sexism.

 

            Still a further look at EFL/ESL texts reveals that not only are they sexist they are also heterosexist and heterocentric.  Heterocentrism is the belief that heterosexuality is somehow superior to, or more “natural” and “normal” than homosexuality, bisexuality or lesbianism.  With relatively few exceptions, notably Heinle and Heinle’s: The Multicultural Workshop  by Linda Blanton and Linda Lee, lesbian/bisexual/gay characters and content are completely lacking in ESL/EFL course books.  This choice to ignore a whole group of people is heterosexism, the oppression of those of sexual orientations other than heterosexual.  It is general held by educators working in eliminating homophobia -- the fear of homosexuals -- that in a class of 30, 1 to 3 students will belong to this identity grouping.  However, the institution of education and the people who work within it does almost nothing to promote their integration into the social fabric or use the tools of education to remove the centuries of ignorance and intolerance surrounding the subject.

 

            Listed below are a couple of classroom activities which can be used to begin raising the level of awareness in students concerning sexism within language and society. 

 

•     Collect pictures of people with various facial types.  In class, have students speculate on what the person may be like.  Note what types of reactions students have.  Do they react more favourably to women who fit traditional concepts of “feminine” and men who fit the traditional concept of “masculine?”  Also note the range of fantasy they use for occupations, personality and life styles.  What about marital status and number of children?  If students say one woman is married and another isn’t, find out why they think this.

 

•     Make a collection of stick figures, which are indistinguishable sexually,  holding objects or doing something; e.g., driving a bus, holding a soccer ball, standing by a stove.  Have students make up stories about each one and note the pronoun used.  Ask why they chose the male or female pronoun for the object.

 

•     Make a list of “ways I have benefited by being a male/female today.”  One list of positives, and one list of negatives.

 

GENDER DIFFERENCES AND THE LANGUAGE LEARNER

 

            Not only must we be aware of the sexism within language, we must also strive to eliminate sexism within our classrooms and our teaching style.  An important finding for classrooms is that the sex of the teacher makes less difference on the way she/he behaves than the sex of her or his students.  Very little research has been conducted on this topic within the L2 classroom as so we must rely on studies carried out in other subjects (Ekstrand, 1980; French and French, 1984).  What this research has discovered is:

 

•     Very often boys receive more teacher attention than girls;

•     Boys get more blame, approval, disapproval and instructions than girls;

•     Girls who call out answers are reprimanded more than boys who call out;

•     Boys receive more “wait time”;

•     Girls are asked more “product question” (What is the answer to number 5?), while boys are asked more “process questions” (Why is the answer to number 5 twenty-three meters?)

 

            In order to bcome aware of your own attitudes and what happens in your classroom, a possible activity is to have a colleague observe your class and keep track of the points above, especially who is called on first and who is asked process question.   The result of this type of observation can give insight into personal habits which often are not done intentionally, but given a message just the same to learners.

 

TALK-INHIBITION STRATEGIES IN WHOLE CLASS SETTINGS:

            Coates (1987, 1989 a,b,c, 1991, 1993), Corson (1993), Holmes (1988, 1992 a,b,), Tannen (1986, 1991) and others have shown that men and women talk differently.  Women appear co-operative, facilitative participants, demonstrating in a variety of ways their concern for their conversational partners, while men tend to dominate the talking time, interrupt more often than women, and focus on content of the interaction and the task at hand, at the expense of attention to their addressees.  Moreover, men retain conversational control simply by talking for longer and taking more frequent turns than women. 

 

            Most language learners consider opportunities to talk and practice using the language very important.  These patterns of male domination of talking time in ELT classrooms give reason for concern that women are getting less than their fair share of opportunities to practice using English.

 

 Classroom activity: Observed class discussion. 

   Have the male students sit in a circle and the females sit in a circle around them.

   Each female picks a male to observe his verbal and nonverbal communication (great way to point out paralinguistics to students).  The female students do not say anything while the males are talking.

   The males pick one of the following topics for discussion:

   What they like about being male.

   What they don’t like about being male.

   What they like about females.

   What they don’t like about females.

 

   When the males are finished, each female gives her observations of what the male she was watching said (verbally) and did (nonverbal gestures, movements, body position).  The males cannot say anything while the females are discussing them.

   Reverse everything with the females in the center circle and the males doing the observations.

   Afterwards, have a general discussion about how everyone felt, their reactions, particularly note the paralinguistic activity.  Did females or males use more non-verbal communication?  What does this tell the opposite sex in his/her communication?

 

INTERRUPTING IN SMALL GROUPS:

            Men frequently self-select as group leaders, and then interrupt others to keep the group “on task,” regardless of the feelings being expressed by the speaker or their relevance to the direction and overall goals of the discussion.

            In order to see how valid this assumption is, I carried out an experiment in which I divided my class into same-sex small groups.  I was in a large lecture hall, so the students had plenty of space to organize their groups.  However, I had all the female groups sit on one side of the lecture hall and the males sit on the other.  I then gave each group the task of summarizing an article they had read at home (“Can We Talk?” An interview with Deborah Tannen by Peggy Taylor, New Age Journal). The task in itself soon became secondary in importance to what I observed:  The all-female groups, under their own direction, soon had organized into one large group with a core of three leaders who were coordinating brainstorming and writing processes.  All the female students were on-task and working at something.  The all-male groups remained broken into small groups, with only two groups functioning as a unit out of ten groups of 3 - 4 persons.  In the other groups, one male student was doing the writing and completion of task, while the other members were off-task.  The women completed the task in 20 minutes.  The males were still trying to organize themselves and tried to save face by arguing that I should agree to accept the only completed summary as valid for all the male groups.  It is my conclusion that while males like to dominate the discussion, they do not like to be required to menial tasks; e.g., keep notes about the discussion.  When grouped by themselves, my male students confirmed the hypothesis expressed by Tannen in the article they read at home:  males do not know how to communicate effectively among themselves.  When I pointed out what had occurred in the two groups, the males replied that “they didn’t know” they could form one group.  I purposely had left the directions open-ended to see what route the groups would take on their own.  This attitude by the males would underscore the hypothesis that males interpret “on-task” based on the directions given, whereas female students are more likely to adapt directions to facilitate task completion.

 

CHALLENGES AND DISAGREEMENTS:

            In some contexts men seem to maximize disagreements, argue and challenge each other (so called “one-up, one-down” behaviour).  Women on the other hand, tend to stress agreement; their talk is essentially friendly (Maltz and Borker, 1982).  Male challenges and disagreements had the effect of discouraging the women from participating as enthusiastically as they otherwise might and thus discouraging women from contributing freely to the discussion.

 

            This type of “aggressive behaviour” is viewed as only natural in most society for males.  In fact, women who engage is similar behavioural patterns are often considered deviant from the norm and in some cases suffer punishement and reticule by the male members of her community.  In order to explore how this type of thinking in ingrained within learners, the following activities can offer opportunities for self exploration.

 

•     Have the class line up in a straight line and tell them to pick their position on the basis of their importance.  {DO NOT tell them what to judge importance on.}  Set a time limit of 15 - 20 minutes to do this.  Afterwards, ask the students their reasons for the organization of the line?  Point out where the women are and ask why?  On what grounds was their importance decided compared to the men?

 

•     Have students bring to class their favorite comic books/magazines.  Discuss the roles portrayed in them regarding the status of women.  (Many popular comics for males are extremely violent and portray women as objects of sexual desires or sexually stimulating violence.) 

 

•     Divide the class into small groups.  Bring in a big stack of old magazines, scissors and paste.  In groups have the students make a collage of the “ideal woman” and the “ideal man.”  They need to include physical description, emotional characteristics, personality, and mannerisms.  Then have each group explain their ideas.

 

“RESPONSE-RESTRICTING” QUESTIONS:

            As pointed out above, women are often asked product questions that restrict their answer options; i.e., yes/no or either/or answers.  A process question is an “open question” in which the answer possibilities apparently give the respondent more discretion over the length and content of the response.  Hence, the conclusion drawn is that product questions have the effect of closing off and stifling discussion.  In order to eliminate “response-resticting” questioning, instructors need to be attentive in lesson planning, writing out process questions and then making a note of who was called upon to reply to the question.  Instructors can then review over the course of time if their own questioning style is improving and the contributions make to class discussions by both male and female members.

 

WHAT TO DO TO CHANGE THE SITUATION

            The patterns of interaction that characterize female-male behaviour reflect and perpetuate the structured inequalities which characterize the relationships between women and men in most societies.  Therefore as teachers of language we need to:

 

•     Ask more open-questions to female students;

•     Allow more “wait time” in responding; research has show that the average wait time an instructor gives a student is three seconds, when wait time is increased to 7 - 15 seconds, learners produce more correct responses;

•     Male students need exercises to help them develop talk-support skills.  Such activities include:

•     Active listening skills to give support and encouragement to their conversation partners. (See box on right.)

•     Provide utterances which confirm points made by their partners, elaborating and developing their partner’s points from their own experience, i.e.: “I see what you mean...”,  “I can relate to that...” or paralinguistical actions like nodding affirmatively, maintaining eye contact, facisl expressions, etc.

•     Express disagreement in a non-confrontational manner; i.e. conflict resolution skills using Win-Win strategies (Birch 1994).

•     Ask facilitative questions which encourage others to contribute to the discussion.  Questions like:  “Would anyone like to contribute to...”,  “Mary has just made an interesting point, does anyone have something to add...”,  “What do you think of this point, Mark?”, etc.

 

            As can be seen from the above there is much instructors can do to improve the lot of their female students.  It is important that the instructor first become attentive to his/her own attitudes through reflective evaluation and observation.  Then in applying these ideas to the classroom, learners should be guided in discovery of where their opinions originate and what changes they can do on an individual level.  I would caution against force instruction.  Propaganda is propaganda no matter how “correct” the motivation for such teaching might be.  Our Western culture is not necessarily anymore correct than Islamic or Communist culture.  I also believe that the West has much to learn from non-Western cultures regarding care of the family, the aged and sick.

 

 

CONCLUSION:

            An important task for teacher education is to raise awareness of the nature of materials and to develop the skills to identify and evaluate how gender and gender issues are dealt with in the materials teachers choose or are directed to use.  Female characters are numerically fewer in coursebooks and have more limited occupational and discourse roles than males.  Thus, it can be concluded that an impact of this reality also affects classroom practices and restricts female students’ language learning opportunities.  Arising out of this, teachers need to develop the awareness in their learners of this overt sexism.  In terms of interaction with text, learners need to be encouraged to:

 

1. Analyse what attitudes about gender and gender roles are reflected in the material;

2. Examine whether what people do and say and how they do and say things is linked to their position as men and women in society, in the family, in the culture of the workplace, etc.;

3. Consider role reversals for male and female characters in the situation presented;

4. Explore reactions to characters that are not ‘gender correct’, i.e. a woman pilot, a househusband; ways of using language that are not ‘gender appropriate’, i.e. women leading decision-making processes, such as at Board of Director meetings, etc.;

5. Contest existing assumptions about gender and gender roles in communication.

 

            The subtle message conveyed by male domination concerning the paramount importance of male talk and male experience in the classroom is no longer acceptable to those concerned with the rights and self-esteem of female students.  Social justice in the language learning classroom involves providing a receptive environment for females which encourages and stimulates them.  A change in the sexism of education can be created only through effort on the part of language instructors to bring about a change in themselves.  For me it meant to consciously note who I called on for answers and evaluate why I was calling on that person and not another.  Since sexism is often overtly learned and instilled within us, we must make conscious efforts at eliminating it from our classroom practices and our speech.  Being male I have had to learn not to interrupt others when speaking, listening until the speaker has finished, then expressing my point of view/idea.  It has not been easy.  On the other hand, having made the effort to achieve these small changes in my own communication style, I believe that I am better able to address the needs of my female learners and ensure that they are receiving quantity and quality attention.

 

 

References:

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