A study examined the influence of gender upon students' responses to teachers' communication in the classroom by looking at 220 university students' evaluations of teaching assistants' (TAs) communicative competence, effectiveness, and appropriateness, and their satisfaction in communicating with teaching assistants of both genders. Not surprisingly, students ranked best and worst TAs as significantly different from each other in terms of overall communicative competence and in measures of specific competence dimensions of empathy, affiliation and support, behavioral flexibility, and interaction management. No significant gender differences were found for communicative competence ratings of men and women TAs within the best and worst categories. Women students tended to be harsher judges of TAs' communicative competency than men students. This finding, combined with findings that women were significantly less likely than men to be chosen as best TA and significantly more likely to be selected as worst TA, indicate the possible presence of subtle gender biases in the teaching evaluation process. (Contains 5 tables of data and 61 references.) (Author)