READ BOTH TEXTS AND WORK IN PAIRS TO COMPLETE THE ANSWERS
Men talk just as much as women-can it really be true?
Resarch by psychologists at University of Arizona has shown that the stereotype that women talk more than men may not be true. In the study,hundreds of university students were fitted with recorders and the total number of words they used during the day was then counted.
The results, published in the New Scientist, showed that women speak about 16.000 words a day and men speak only slightly fewer. In fact, the four motst talktative people in the study were all men.
Professor Matthias Mehl, who was in charge of the research, said that he and his colleagues had expected to find that women were more talkative.
However, they had been sceptical of the common belief that women use three times as many words as men. This idea became popular after the publication of a book called The Female Brain (2006) whose author, Louann Brizendine, claimed that " a woman uses about 20,000 words per day, whereas a man used about 7.000".
Professor Mehl accepts that many people will find the results difficult to believe. However, he thinks that his research is important because the stereotype, that women talk too much and men keep quiet, is bad not only for women but also for men. "It says that to be a good male, it ´s better not to talk- that silence is golden".
A gossip with the girls ? Just pick any one of forty subjects
Women are experts at gossiping- and they often talk about trivial things, or at least that´s what men have always thought. However according to reserach carried out by Professor Petra Boynton, a pshychologist at Univeristy College London, when women talk to women their conversations are not trivial at all, and cover many more topics (up to 40) than when men talk to other men.
Women´s conversationsrange from health to their houses, from politics to fashion, from films to family, from education to relationships problems. Almost everything, in fact, except football. Men tend to talk about fewer subects, the most popular being work, sport, jokes, cars, and women.
Professor Boyton interviewed over 1.000 women for her study. She also found that women move quickly from one subject to another in conversation, whereas men usually stick to one subject for longer periods of time.
Professor Boyton also says that men and women chat for different reasons. In social situations women use conversation to solve problems and reduce stress, while men chat with each other to have a laugh or to swap opinions.
1) In pairs, answer the questions.
1. Are you a talkative or a quiet person?
2.Who is...?
a. the most talkative person in your family
b. the most talkative person you know.
3. Do you think that, generally speaking, women are more talkative than men?
4. What topics do a) men talk about more than women? b) women talk about more than men?
2)Look at the definition of stereotype. Then A read the article Men talk just as much as women and B read the article A gossip with the girls? Find answers to questions 1-4.
1. What was the stereotype that the researchers wanted to investigate?
2. Where was the research done?
3. How was the research done?
4. What did the reserach show?
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