Zach drawing a banana transcript

Z begins by drawing a banana in his pad. He then begins to describe to H what he is drawing and H tries to engage him more in conversation by asking him many open questions like "what have you eaten today?" and "what happened though?". These types of questions allow Z to give H as much or as little detail as possible depending on whether he would like to engage in the conversation to a higher level or not. H used fifteen open-ended questions and around fourteen closed-ended however some of these closed-ended questions may have just been used for H to clarify the information to herself and not needing Z to confirm it for example "are the skins off are they?". H also asks a question and then continues speaking following this with another question for example "are the skins off are they? ready(.) so the bananas ready to eat?" this could be a cause for the little difference between the number of open and closed-ended questions. As some of the questions H asks probably wont get an answer as it may be too complicated for Z to have to remember both questions or the first one simply just does not needan answer.

HR magazine extract

Men and women are known to talk differently and there have been many different theories and claims that have tried to discover why. Is it due to society and the way people assume men and women should talk or is it purely biological? These differences in speech occur in the workplace as well as everyday life and employers, whether male or female, need to make more of an effort to understand the differences between their employees.

Women have been known to society as the "weaker" communicators. Their speech has been claimed as trying to please others. However it has also been found that women are more supportive speakers; they tend to listen whilst others are speaking and they wait for their turn, they have been found to interrupt less during conversations and they encourage others to continue speaking. Men on the other hand have been found to interrupt during conversations especially when it is a mixed sex conversation and they have been criticised for being highly dominant in conversation. This can create an uncomfortable atmosphere in the workplace as some women may not appreciate, especially in this day and age, men trying to dominate them whilst they are working at the same level and completing the same job as them. However the differences in the way men and women talk can be highly beneficial to employers as well as they will be able to assign specific roles to their employees based on how well they will be able to complete the tasks for example, men may be better at upselling their products as they are more able to dominate the conversation and the customers may be more likely to listen to them.


Commentry:


I wanted to show the differences that have been found in male and female talk and I wanted to show how this can cause difficulties, especially in the workplace. I wanted to show how later on in the article it was going to talk more about how the difference in men and womens speech could cause problems in the workplace so that the readers would be able to recognise the whole time whilst reading the article that it was based around employers valuing diverse speech.


I wanted to give examples of how the different ways in which men and women speak could also be beneficial to employers and show how they can make the best use of these differences. Including this at the end of the paragraph may persuade the reader to continue reading to find out more about the benefits of this diversity in their workforce. I also tried to be quite tentative in these examples as it is not often true that men are better at some things and women are better at others, they can be equally as good at the same things it just depends on the individual so by being tentative I have managed to allow more room for people to read into it the way they want to and to be able to apply it to their own situation.