Gender Differences in Chinese Senior High School Students’ Use of Disagreement Strategies

Abstract

To date, the studies on disagreement strategies in Chinese mainly focus on adults, and relevant research on senior high school students is rare. This study intends to explore gender differences in Chinese senior high school students’ use of disagreement strategies. By adopting a discourse completion task (DCT) and modified Yang’s classification of disagreement strategies (2015), we designed an open-ended questionnaire survey of 12 situations with three social factors (social distance, social status, and sex of hearer) which was distributed among 100 Chinese senior high school students. Then we analyzed all the 96 valid survey responses and did a T-test. The results show that the distribution of disagreement strategies is uneven, with Softened Disagreement Strategy (SDS, 96.96%) dominating, and that there exist significant gender differences in Chinese senior high school students’ use of Neither Softened Nor Strengthened Disagreement Strategy (NSNSDS) (p=0.0330.05). The present study contributes to the understanding of disagreement and gender differences in disagreement strategies and offers implications to communication and EFL teaching for Chinese teenagers.

Research on Issues and Guidance Strategies of Peer Interactions During Area Activities in Senior Kindergarten Classes

“…[9] For example, in Doll home of the older preschool class, girls, who generally have more developed social interaction skills than boys, often take a leading role in organizing various role-playing games, with a significant presence of gender stereotypes. [10] Girls typically play gentle roles such as mothers or princesses, while boys often assume roles like fathers or policemen, portraying more aggressive or brave characters. [11] In construction play areas, girls demonstrate stronger cooperative interaction skills than boys, who are more prone to conflicts and disagreements.…”