People interact one another at every moment. This is the manifestation of their nature as social creatures. One aspect that must exist in interaction process is the process of communication. Communication is a process of conveying and receiving message to gain understanding between the parties involved (sender and receiver). The process of communication consists of sender, encoding, channel, decoding, receiver, feedback and context. Sender is the source of message, encoding is the process of transferring message, and channel involves face-to-face meeting, telephone, ect. Decoding is the process of receiving data and receiver is the party that receives the message. This activity takes place in a context and consists also feedback. As noted in Wikipedia, there are means in communication such as auditory means, nonverbal or physical means and writing. Examples of auditory means are speaking and singing, whereas the examples of physical means are body language, sign language, paralanguage, touch and eye contact.
Conversation is a communication activity which uses the auditory means. It consists of same sex (two women or two men) conversation and mixed sex conversation (involving one member of each sex). People are speaking when conversing one to another. By Labov and Fanshel (in Schiffrin et al. 2001:514) conversation is described as a matrix of utterances and action tied fastenly together by a web of understandings and reactions. We can see that in conversation there are communication aspects such as message (through utterances), encoding and decoding process (demand understanding), reaction (though feedback), context (included in the web), and the parties for sure. For that reason conversation is a communication activity.
Many researches and studies such as those which were conducted by Zimmerman and West (1975), Eakins and Eakins (1978), Deborah Tannen (1990), etc. show that men and women have their own characteristics when they are communicating orally particularly conversing, and these characteristics claim what so called differences.
Not only end up with the statement of differences but also the claim that these characteristics signal power. For example, based on Zimmerman and West’s research result in 1975, in mixed-sex conversation men produce many interruptions, whereas in same sex conversation men share almost equal interruptions. In this kind of conversation too, male speakers often control the topic by delaying their minimal responses, mostly as a signal they are not interested in or understand the current speakers’ topic (female). These result to a condition where men take control of the conversation. They have power on it.
The fact that men tend to dominate the conversation when they are speaking to women is common among linguistic and communication researchers. Krupnick found in her research in 1985 over classroom discussion led by instructors at Harvard College that male students talked much in the predominant classroom circumstance: i.e., the situation in which the instructor is male and the majority of the students are male. Of the six classes (one quarter of the sample) in which this was the situation, male students spoke two and a half times longer than their female peers. Eakins and Eakins (in de Lange, 1995: 4) in their research over faculty meeting found that the average number of verbal turns per meeting for males was big and females’ average number was small. This does not happen only as man and woman become university students or worker, but this kind of behavior has already existed since they were in their child period. Maltz & Borker (in de Lange, 1995: 2) state that boys use speech for the expression of dominance when they are working and playing in same-sex groups and girls use it to build and maintain relationship.
Back to the issue of conversation, in conversation there are several features exist such as; turn taking, interruption, topic control and quantity of talk. These are the mostly studied features by many researchers such as example above. Conversation takes place anytime and anywhere including in a classroom. It is simple, because classroom is also a social setting; an idea originates from Vygotsky’s idea in socio-cultural theory. What happens in the real world in terms of people behavior is demonstrated in classroom, for example the process of conversation. The characteristics of men and women conversational features in society occur when they are conversing inside the classroom during classroom interaction.
Classroom interaction has been described as the form and content of behavior or social interaction in the classroom (Marshal, 1998). This kind of interaction has also been viewed as a very functional and helpful tool in language learning process. According to Allright (in Consolo 2006:34), classroom interaction is the process whereby classroom language learning is managed. Also, classroom interaction is considered a productive teaching technique. Making use of classroom interaction has been expected to make an effective teaching and learning process. Interaction in language classroom is also believed to have contribution on learner’s language development since language classroom is seen as sociolinguistics environment according to Cazden, and discourse communities in accordance to Hall and Verplaetse (in Consolo 2006:34). There are many patterns of classroom interaction, such as group work, closed-ended teacher questioning, open-ended teacher questioning, individual work, choral responses, collaboration, teacher initiates and student answers, student initiates and teacher answer, full-class interaction, self-access and teacher talk. In full-class interaction students debate a topic or do a language task as a class where in the teacher may intervene occasionally, to stimulate participation or to monitor.
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