A study examined the differential grading that occurs in the basic speech communication classroom and attempted to identify predictors for the differences in the grades that male and female students receive. Subjects, 47 women and 48 men enrolled in the same lecture section of a basic communication course at a small private midwestern college, completed the Personal Attributes Questionnaire and indicated their sex on the instruments. Each subject's final grade in the course, ACT score, and high school grade point average were obtained from college records. Analysis of the results indicated that when the effects of classroom context and abilities are removed, biological sex is still a significant predictor of grade in the speech communication course, but psychological sex, or sex type, is not. Two possible explanations for these results--that women are more effective oral communicators than men, or that evaluators respond more favorably to the same communication skills when they are demonstrated by women--are currently being studied. (JL)