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| Overview |
 This lesson plan engages students in a brief writing assignment that concretely illustrates how language and gender stereotyping interact causally. Students write a response to a short prompt which includes no information about the participants' gender. Once the writing is complete, students and teacher analyze the narratives for the use of pronouns and what the pronoun choices reveal about language use.
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| From Theory to Practice |
As we use language to communicate with one another, we also reveal much about the ways that we think and view; for what we know is revealed in the ways that we talk about the world around us. In his article on epistemic teaching methods, Kenneth Dowst explains:
(1)[W]e do not know the world immediately; rather we compose our knowledge by composing language; (2) how we can act depends on what we know, hence on the language with which we make sense of the world; (3) serious experimenting in composing with words is experimenting in knowing new ways, perhaps better ways. (70)
By writing and examining a short narrative in this activity, students demonstrate their own assumptions and ways of thinking and how their language use reveals those assumptions. Current handbooks offer recommendations and alternative phrasings for avoiding sexist language. But after a discussion of this writing assignment, more students understand why the handbooks encourage gender-fair pronoun uses.
Work Cited
Dowst, Kenneth. 1980. "The Epistemic Approach: Writing, Knowing, and Learning." Eight Approaches to Teaching Composition, pp. 65–85. Ed. Timothy R. Donovan and Ben W. McClelland. Urbana: NCTE.
This lesson is adapted from Christopher G. Hayes, "A Brief Writing Assignment for Introducing Non-Sexist Pronoun Usage," Teaching English in the Two-Year College 28.1(September 2000): 74–77.
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| Student Objectives |
Students will
- explore the ways that language and gender stereotyping interact.
- experiment with ways of using language to create gender-fair texts.
- reflect on their own language practices and what those practices reveal about their understanding of gender roles and language.
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| Instructional Plan |
Resources
Preparation
- Identify the resources that you want to use with your class, either in your
textbooks or choosing among the available Web Resources. Make handouts
or overheads of materials that are not in students' textbooks.
- Make copies or an overhead of the In-Class
Narrative Writing Assignment.
Instruction and Activities
Session One
- Introduce the writing assignment by discussing the basic characteristics
of narrative writing. The Texas A&M Writing Center's Stories and Narratives provides a list of prewriting decisions that you
can use to introduce the activity, or you can rely on information in your
class textbook.
- Give students the In-Class
Narrative Writing Assignment. Depending upon
your students, you may allow them to complete the writing at home; however,
having them complete the task in class is more likely to result in students'
initial, uncensored responses to the scenario described in the prompt.
- Allow students the remainder of the class period to write. Serve as the
timekeeper, letting students know as the end of class is approaching.
- Collect all of the papers at the end of the session.
Session Two
- BEFORE beginning the next class session, read through the students' papers. Your purpose is not so much to "correct"
them for pronoun–antecedent agreement errors as to see how students' choices
of pronouns (or names) identify the gender of each character in the narrative.
- Choose passages from a couple of papers to share with the class.
- Optionally, you can prepare a table compiling the gender distribution represented
in the narratives. Either make copies of the table to distribute to students
or make an overhead of the table to share with them.
- Start the class by reading one or two passages from students' narratives that employ pronouns
that reflect gendered roles. Ask students to visualize the characters from
the story as you read.
- Once you've finished reading, note details from students visualizations
on the board or on chart paper, grouped by the character (e.g., judge, police
officer).
- Share the Student Ascriptions of Gender Table for groups of students who completed the assignment
in 1987 and 1997. Ask students to identify biased job roles represented on
the chart.
- Compare the information on the chart with the assumptions revealed on the
lists on the board. Invite student discussion of the gender assumptions that
the numbers on the chart and on the board reveal.
- Turn to the way that language has shaped these assumptions, what the choice
of "he" rather than "she" communicates about our ways
of thinking about the world around us. Distribute information on the use of
gender-fair language such as the Purdue
OWL's handout on non-sexist language, or point students' attention to
similar information in their texts.
- Return students' in-class writings. For homework, ask them to read their
narrative and write a reflective piece that explores how their use of pronouns
reveals their assumptions about others. The general question for their reflection
is this: What do you notice now about the language that you used in your narrative
that you didn't notice when you originally wrote it, and how does your use
of pronouns play a role in what you notice? The piece should be informal.
Students' self-reflection is the primary goal.
Web Resources
- Guidelines
for Gender-Fair Use of Language
http://www.ncte.org/positions/gender.shtml
- These guidelines, by NCTE's Women in Literacy and Life Assembly (WILLA),
outline preferred gender-fair usage as well as how teachers can work with
students to encourage them to avoid sexist language.
- Purdue
OWL: Non-Sexist Language
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/general/gl_nonsex.html
- The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) provides this student-friendly handout
of NCTE's guidelines for non-sexist language use. You may also want to share
the Using
Pronouns Clearly handout.
- Wikipedia
Entry on Non-sexist Language
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-sexist_language
- Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia, provides background, guidelines,
and information on gender-free usage in several languages.
- Language Debates: Pronoun–Antecedent Agreement
http://www.dianahacker.com/bedhandbook/subpages/pronoun.html
- Check out Diana Hacker's explanation of the various arguments surrounding how a writer writes his/her/their pronouns. This background shows that the issues are not as clear-cut as they may seem and that there is no one right answer.
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| Student Assessment/Reflections |
This assignment offers an opportunity for students to voice their perspectives on sexist usage and gender equality. Feedback on the activity should focus on students' self-reflection rather than "right" or "wrong" choices that they may make with their pronouns.
After the second class session, collect students original in-class narratives and the accompanying self-reflection. Read the pieces and comment on the self-reflections, noting importance self-observations that students make and asking provoking questions where they need to think more deeply. |
4 - Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
9 - Students develop an understanding of and respect for diversity in language use, patterns, and dialects across cultures, ethnic groups, geographic regions, and social roles.
11 - Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.
12 - Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).
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