Bashir is an 18-year-old Arab with a British mother and Arab father. He has recently arrived in England on a first visit to do an English course. This is an extract from a letter home:

My host family are really friendly, however, I am frustrated. Just when I think I understand what they are saying I know I am wrong. On Monday evening while Mrs Shaw was cooking dinner Mr Shaw came home from work, threw his bag on the sofa and sat down to watch the News. Immediately Mrs Shaw came out of the kitchen and without even saying hello said,'This house is really a mess isn't'' Mr. Shaw interrupted her and said 'it's not a mess'. Then she yelled, 'Oh, we never go out' and then he rightly replied (I think?) 'That's not true, we went out just two nights ago' (Last Friday Mr Shaw took all of us to a great restaurant). She then mumbled 'Oh nobody ever listens to me' and went back into the kitchen ' Mum, we had just been listening to her.'

And so poor Bashir's letter ends:

'Another problem that I have had was with a very nice girl. Some friends and I have been going to Starbucks where there are some Australian waiters who usually greet us with 'Hi there watcha doin babes?' When I was there today, I saw a girl I had met several times at the Shaw's house. I went up to her and said 'Hi babe watcha doin tonight?' She just looked coldly at me and said 'I'm not your babe and I'm always busy,' Mom please help. Where am I going wrong? English is impossible.

An extract from Bashir's mother's reply:

It's easy to understand why you are confused. When talking to each other men and women surprisingly sometimes use different devices to put over their point of view. As husband and wife Mr and Mrs Shaw were using male/female adult/couplespeak. When she complained about the messy house she meant ' I'm tired, can't you put your things away when you come in. She was angry because he neglected to say hello and added to which she had had a tiring day and wanted to go out to eat. When talking with Sophie's friend you were using Australian male/ female teenagespeak which is different yet again. In the U.K. 'Babe' for females is demeaning but in Australian teenagespeak it means 'an attractive person of either sex.' Some motherly advice, I think she might also have liked to be invited out in a slightly less slangy way, e.g. would you like to come out tonight? When you are with William's friends then it is male/male teenagespeak and it is normal to use slang but the conversation changes again when it is male/female teenagespeak. Poor sweet Bashir, it really must be very confusing for you '

These letters, both in general and in particular usages, illustrate some of the acknowledged and well-researched gender-related differences in register. Differential usage by men and women has been found at the lexical, phonological and grammatical levels, as well as in various aspects of conversational style. Anderson (1992) points out that sex is one of the main factors governing 'the particular registers people have in their repertoires.' Poynton's call (1990) to clarify cultural and situational details of context as 'determining probabilistically (not absolutely) certain specifiable features of the language produced in actual situations' has been met to some extent by zeroing in on register differences found between authentic speech of males and females.

The authors suggest that gender aspects of register offer teachers a concrete area to help their intermediate and advanced students raise the level of their conversational skills, to increase the frequency with which students comprehend and participate in real conversations. We present a
brief analysis of Bashir's letter and his mother's reply as embodiments of some of these findings. Furthermore, we recommend dispersion of knowledge of gender-related difference in register to
EFL students and present activities specifically designed to convey particular gender-related findings.

This house is really a mess Poynton (1990) and Anderson (1992) cite research supporting the idea that women employ intensifiers in their speech more than men. Thus in listening and oral exercises students should be alerted that men discriminate more in the use of intensifiers. The authors suggest that intensifiers are also generational in usage; e.g. middle-aged and elderly native speakers tend to use them more than younger speakers.
Isn't it That tag questions show up more frequently in women's speech than in men's has been reported and is often cited (e.g. Anderson, 1992) but Poynton (1990) cautions that there are no observational studies to confirm this.
Mr Shaw's interruption of Mrs Shaw could have been predicted from research findings that males are the more likely interruptor in mixed conversation. Female students may need a booster shot of teacher encouragement when males exhibit this particular behaviour during class discussions.
Women tend to use speech forms of higher prestige than those used by men. The findings of Gordon (1997) and Woolard (1997) support earlier researchers who explain such linguistic choices by women on the basis of social class. Waiters and Bashir express themselves with slang and contractions while Bashir's mother recommends using a modal for a more successful encounter with the opposite sex.

Here are two exercises to acquaint students with the above generalisations. It is suggested after the role play that the lesson continues with a discussion focusing on the presence or absence of these tendencies of male and female speech in the student-created conversations.

What are they saying?

Give each pair one of the following situations with the instruction: Decide what each person is saying, write out and practise your role play.

Each pair is sitting together in a restaurant:

two young friends celebrating one's birthday
a male and female colleague at a business lunch
a married couple celebrating their wedding anniversary
Choose a pair from each group to act out for the class.

What did they say?

Give each student one of the following scenarios with the instruction to prepare the dialogue for an answering machine.

Cancel meeting with a business colleague.
Tell your partner to buy some flowers for a dinner party you are going to.
Confirm to a friend that you will meet him/her at a restaurant at 9.00p.m.

Work with a partner. Listen to each other's messages. Report your partner's message to the class.

Oh we never go out Meaningless particles such as 'oh' point to different lexical usage by women in place of the stronger expletives that frequent men's speech. The authors have observed this gender-related difference tends to become less apparent amongst female teenagespeak.
'Poor sweet Bashir' While many adjectives are found in the speech of both sexes, adjectives such as 'sweet' tend to be associated more with female usage. Similarly, the connotation of adjectives can vary between sexes in terms of attitude as to whether they are viewed as being positive or negative ' adjectival association with men and women (Archer and Lloyd, 1982). Despite the evidence of gender-based variation in adjectival choice, the writers feel it is still unclear exactly what are merely stereotypes as opposed to actual gender differences in language. Needless to say this complicates the issue further for the language learner. Guidance and awareness raising activities should be initiated in class. This leads us to Bashir's next letter to his mother.
I think I am finally beginning to understand. Today we did a great exercise in class and things became much clearer. It was called What are you like? What do you look like? True/False.

First of all we had to write an alphabetical list of adjectives in answer to the above questions e.g. A assertive, T tall, C careful etc.

Then we exchanged lists with a partner and put a cross on those adjectives we felt were positive and a minus on the negative ones.

Next we wrote a positive description of our sex trying to use some of the adjectives on our list.

Finally we read our descriptions to the class which prompted a lively discussion. It was amazing somebody thought assertive and careful were both negative whereas I thought an assertive man was really positive. I also noticed what you had said about which sex tries to initiate, interrupt and talk more in class our teacher was great she ensured that everybody had a chance. However, the best part of my day was when I saw Sophie's friend in Starbucks, I did what you said. Guess what? We are going out together tonight