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ISSN 2721-0979 (Print), ISSN 2721-1258 (Online)
Copyright © 2020, Journal La Edusci, Under the license CC BY-SA 4.0
JOURNAL LA EDUSCI
VOL. 01, ISSUE 02 (001-005), 2020
DOI: 10.37899/journallaedusci.v1i2.82
Male and Female Instructors’ Instructional Talks in Indonesian
College EFL Classrooms: Case Study of Vocational Higher
Education in South Sulawesi
Surya Dewi1, Syamsidar2, Lily Dianafitry3
1Lecturer, Politeknik Pariwisata Makassar, 2Lecturer, Institusi Agama Islam
Negeri Kendari, 3Lecturer, Politeknik Pariwisata Makassar
Corresponding Author: Surya Dewi
Email: suryadewi890@gmail.com
Article Info
Article history:
Received 12 April 2020
Received in revised form 24
April 2020
Accepted 24 April 2020
Keywords:
Gender
Instructional Talks
EFL Classrooms
Abstract
It is believed that men are different from women in communicating their
ideas and feelings through the communication system called language.
This article divulges how gender factor influences EFL instructors’
instructional talks in Indonesian context. It goes over findings of a case
study undertaken at two colleges in Makassar, South Sulawesi. In the
study, four EFL instructors (two male and two female) of the colleges
were purposively chosen as the subjects, and the data leading to the
findings were obtained through classroom observation. The findings
reveal that the male instructors’ instructional talks are quite stiff and
typically stimulate instructor-centered atmosphere, while the female
instructors’ are more genial and naturally stimulate instructor-students
harmonious interactive communications. Thus, it can be inferred that
while the male instructors tend to be ‘commanders’ in front of the class,
the female set themselves as amicable “mothers” to the students.
Introduction
When some teachers have the same level of competence, will gender factor make a difference
to their teaching performances in the class? This question seems to have been in scholars’
minds for ages. In fact, despite its long age, the issue still looks charming on the scientific
stage.
Men and women have their own ways of communication Wahyuningsih (2018) signifying that
the way teachers use language in leading the classroom interaction with students can be
affected by gender factor. The big possibility is due to the fact that teacher-students interaction
in the teaching and learning process is essentially a social interaction, a social event through
language in which ideas are exchanged, feelings are expressed and questions are answered, and
in holding the social event, both sides (teacher and students) can never release themselves from
their innate tendencies as human beings. In the context of English as a Foreign Language (EFL)
classroom, (Sundari, 2017) found that teacher-student interactions are gender-related, and
discovered that female teachers have better self-efficacy than do male. Definitely, those claims
are nothing but a bunch of hypotheses to be confirmed; they still need to be verified in more
contexts of EFL classroom.
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ISSN 2721-0979 (Print), ISSN 2721-1258 (Online)
Copyright © 2020, Journal La Edusci, Under the license CC BY-SA 4.0
In Indonesia, English is taught and learnt as a foreign language. In the world’s largest
archipelago country are hundreds of indigenous languages, and many Indonesians speak an
indigenous language as their mother tongue (Rijal et al., 2019), use Bahasa Indonesia, the
national language, as their second language, and learn English as a third language. Although
the world’s number one international language has been a compulsory subject at secondary
schools and universities for about 70 years, it remains a foreign language in the Southeast
Asia’s largest country. Even for many Indonesians, English is still a “language from Mars”.
This seems to reflect complexity of EFL learning here. Undoubtedly, it takes high sensitivity
towards all phenomena occurring in the EFL teaching and learning processes, including those
related to teacher gender, to change the condition.
Instructional Talk
A classroom interaction is essentially a social interaction through language with teacher and
students as its participants. Such an interaction is built by two components; teacher talk and
student talk (Mahmud, 2015). Being the one in charge, teacher controls the teaching and
learning process in the classroom, therefore, whatever he or she says determines how the
process goes and students’ involvements in the classroom activities. This obviously signals that
teacher talk plays such a vital role in the teaching and learning process.
Literally, teacher talk refers to any utterance coming out from teacher’s mouth in the classroom.
Specifically defined as the language used by teacher in the classroom, it has three major
aspects; psychological, interpersonal and pedagogical aspect (Parsonson, 2012). While the
psychological aspect deals with how teacher uses talk to create conducive atmosphere in the
class, and the interpersonal is about how teacher establishes and maintains classroom
interaction with the students through talk, the pedagogical covers how teacher organizes the
lesson through talk. Simply, teacher talk essentially deals with the language used by teacher in
managing the class and providing the students with instructions, and here come management
and instructional talk.
Language functions in terms of management and instructional talk relate to teachers’ role in
classroom as a teacher and a manager (Sukarni & Ulfah, 2015). This means that it takes both
instructional and management skills to be a good teacher. Instructional skill relates to teacher’s
explanation about subject matter to students, questions, and responses to students’ questions
and answers; while management skill relates to giving effective direction and controlling
students’ discipline and behavior such as presence, reprimand, reward, encouraging, and
facilitating interaction (Vighnarajah et al., 2008)
As the language that teacher uses in transferring the teaching material, instructional talk is
provided in five different contexts; giving explanation, giving direction, giving correction,
asking question and answering question (Sukarni & Ulfah, 2015). Giving explanation means
giving detail information about teaching material; giving direction is providing instructional
direction; giving correction involves giving clarification whether students’ work is correct or
wrong and providing explanation about the mistakes and how to correct it; giving question
deals with giving either instructional and management questions; and answering questions is
about providing responses to students’ questions.
Gender Differences in Communication
Gender differences, which are socially and culturally constructed, are one of the interesting
phenomena in contemporary society. Their impacts can not only be seen in political life, where
women fight for their political rights, or in households, in which women fight to reduce
household harassment. Discourse on gender differences, in fact, also exists in the use of
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ISSN 2721-0979 (Print), ISSN 2721-1258 (Online)
Copyright © 2020, Journal La Edusci, Under the license CC BY-SA 4.0
language for communication, highlighting that men and women are different in their ways of
communication, and therefore they should be treated differently (Pratama et al., 2012).
Badollahi & Almy (2019) has noted that when talking with the same sex peers, women will
use many positive politeness strategies. On the other hand, men in similar circumstances do
not show this tendency. This seems in line with (Mahmud, 2015) notion that women tend to
speak with reference to the rules of politeness, conversational implicates and interpersonal
exploration, while men tend to speak with reference to the rules of conversation and straight
factual communication.
Methods
Employing a single-case study design, the study was undertaken at two colleges in Makassar, South
Sulawesi, Indonesia. Four EFL teachers (two male and two female) of the two schools were
purposively chosen as the subjects. The data leading to the findings were gained through classroom
observation involving audio recording.
Results and Discussion
Predictably, the teachers lead the EFL teaching and learning process with their use of
instructional talk in five different contexts; giving explanation, giving direction, giving
correction, asking question and answering question. It is amazing that either the male or female
teachers provide their instructional talks on their own ways. This implies that there are some
significant differences between the male and female teachers in using instructional talk in the
EFL classroom.
Table 1. Features of the Male and Female Instructors’ Instructional Talks
Male
Female
Giving Explanation
Long and Detailed
Efficient and Interactive
Giving Direction
Simple and to the Point
Long and Detailed
Giving Correction
Direct
Direct
Asking Question
Comprehension Check
Comprehension Check
Answering Question
Direct
Indirect (Involving Students)
As we have seen, the significant differences lie in three of the five contexts of instructional
talk; giving explanation, giving direction and answering question. In giving explanation, the
male teachers speak longer and in detail, while the female tend to explain the material
efficiently and interactively; in giving direction, the male just speak to the point, while the
female typically speak in detail; and in answering question, the male tend to give their answers
directly, while the female typically encourage the whole class to get involved in the answering.
Meanwhile, in the context of giving correction and asking question, both sides seem to have
the same manners; they tend to provide direct corrections for the students’ mistakes and use
questions to check the students’ comprehension. From here, we can see that gender factor to
some extant influences the teachers’ instructional talks.
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ISSN 2721-0979 (Print), ISSN 2721-1258 (Online)
Copyright © 2020, Journal La Edusci, Under the license CC BY-SA 4.0
Giving explanation simply means giving detail information about the teaching material. That
the male teachers’ instructional talks in this context tend to be long and in detail seems to imply
their conviction that the students can fully understand the material if it is described as detailed
as possible. On the contrary, that the female teachers have the tendency to explain the material
in efficient and interactive way seem to represent their idea that a long monologue risks
confusing and boring the students. Conclusively, in giving explanation about the material, the
male teachers are more teacher-centred than are the female, and the female are more
collaborative than are the male.
Giving direction is about providing both instructional and management direction. As elucidated
in Table 1, in giving direction in the EFL classroom, the male teachers tend to go straight to
the point, while the female prefer to speak in detail. This signals that in directing the class, the
male teachers simply say what they want the students to do, while the female seem to consider
that the students can fully understand the direction when it is described in detail. This signals
that in the context giving direction, the female teachers’ instructional talks are typically longer
and more detailed than are the male teachers’.
Giving correction deals with giving clarification whether student’s work is correct or incorrect
and providing explanation about the mistake and how to correct it. Table 4.1 elucidates that in
the EFL teaching and learning processes, either the male or female teachers prefer to correct
the students’ mistakes directly, implying that both sides believe that direct corrections would
be effective in the EFL classroom. Thus, it can simply be claimed that gender factor does not
significantly influence the teachers’ instructional talk in the context of giving correction.
Asking question is giving either instructional or management question. In the EFL teaching
and learning processes, both the male and female teachers mostly question the students just to
check their comprehension. In the opening session of the class, for instance, either the male
and female teachers ask the students about what they got from the previous lesson.
Accordingly, it can be proposed that gender factor does not significantly influence the teachers’
instructional talks in the context of asking question.
Answering question involves providing response to student’s question, and in the EFL teaching
and learning processes, the male teachers tend to just answer the students’ questions directly,
while the female typically invite the whole class to respond to the questions before providing
theanswers. This does mean that in answering questions, the female teachers are so much more
interactive than are the male.
Finally, it can be deduced that the research findings have confirmed (Tran, 2010). notion of
differences between male and female in using language in communication. Indeed, in building
communication through language, female typically consider their relations with others and
therefore prioritize social harmony. In fact, the research findings elucidate that in the context
of EFL classroom, female teachers typically use language to stimulate classroom interactions
with the students, signaling their intention to set themselves as an amicable “mother” to the
students instead of “talking down” to them as a “commander”.
Conclusion
The findings lead us to understand that overall, in the EFL teaching and learning processes, the
female teachers’ instructional talks tend to trigger teacher-students interactions, while the male
teachers’ are just to stimulate teacher-centered atmosphere. This does imply that the female
teachers are typically more interactive, supportive and patient in classroom interaction. In fact,
the female teachers’ classes seem more “alive” than do the male teachers’, or the male teachers’
classes look stiffer than do the female teachers’. Simply, the female teachers seem more
successful than the male in creating and maintaining exciting classroom interactions through
instructional talks. More specifically, the female teachers’ instructional talks seem more
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ISSN 2721-0979 (Print), ISSN 2721-1258 (Online)
Copyright © 2020, Journal La Edusci, Under the license CC BY-SA 4.0
efficient than do the male teachers’ in the EFL teaching and learning processes. Gender is a
gift; there is no way for a male teacher to turn into a female just to have instructional talks
which students prefer in the EFL teaching and learning process. That the research findings
seem to expose the female teachers’ win signposts that male should acquire good qualities of
female in using instructional talk. In using instructional talk in the EFL teaching and learning
process, male teachers need to be “more female”, which means that they have to have sufficient
sensitivity to students’ condition.
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