The focus of this highly quantitative investigation is the analysis of the differences observed, both in methodological approach and in language choice in the classroom, during five years of classroom visitations. The study reflects information collected from two very different institutions with radically distinct populations: a rural setting with traditional students of a rural background with very limited ethnic diversity; and a city setting with a commuting population of low socio-economic level, ethnically diverse, non-traditional students. While differences in the setting and the student population could have been expected to have a major impact on the two topics under scrutiny, data shows that most of the basic divergences are based on the instructors' gender and secondarily their age. It is concluded that there are clear differences between genders in their approach to teaching and their choice of language to communicate and interact in the classroom environment. In general, women prefer more dialectic forms of interaction, and men tend to use more didactic strategies. A slight variation was also observed according to age: older instructors (over 60) favor didactic teaching strategies, use more formal language registers, and show restricted patterns of nonverbal communication which are closer to those generally observed in males. (Contains 13 references.) (KFT)