ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the transcript of classroom discourse made from an audio-recording of a class of eleven- and twelve-year-old girls and boys who are learning German. The teacher, a woman, has been asking volunteers to 'perform' a German dialogue. The school has its own Equal Opportunities Policy and most teachers are aware that giving male and female students differential attention is something that can easily happen despite good intentions, and is a clear Equal Opportunities issue. The author's research topic in the school was the role of gender, in the sense of gender roles, relations and identities, in the modern foreign language classroom, how gender, though not fixed, can affect language learning opportunities, and how gender is itself shaped by language classroom processes. Subjectivity includes an individual's gender identity, over which discourses continually struggle: The nature of femininity and masculinity is one of the key sites of discursive struggle for the individual.
