Research has established important links between student sense of belonging in the classroom and levels of academic engagement, motivation, and persistence (e.g., Jang et al., 2016; Reeve, 2012) yet more work is needed to identify specific teacher communication tactics and strategies that can foster sense of belonging and increased engagement.…

This study explored the language practices of a small group of international Chinese students in an anglophone Higher Education context where English was the medium of instruction. The context was the first year of an early childhood education course at an Australian university. Building on findings from research in conversation analysis on…

Meaning-making in a new era increasingly defined by digital communication is a complicated ensemble of both verbal and non-verbal modes. Following this trend of conveying information multimodally, digital memes have become a new and viral way to communicate and make meaning. Memeing, as a multimodal and social practice, may hold potential for…

Since its inception, pragmatic competence has been studied vastly; the majority of these studies, however, have examined pragmatic production, and pragmatic comprehension is chiefly under-researched. This lack of adequate research also stands true for the underlying pragmatic comprehension processes and strategies. Therefore, the present…

Foreign language teaching highlights the cultivation of the learners' communicative competence, because the main purpose of learning a foreign language is to use the target language to communicate. However, many students in higher institutions in China cannot speak English fluently after having learned English for more than ten years, although…

Demonstratives and pointing gestures are universal, early emerging, and ubiquitous, and it has long been claimed that there is a special relationship between them. But what exactly is the nature of this relationship? The present study investigates this question using a referential communication task. Speakers referred to targets that were near or…

Readers can explore 13 teaching innovations presented at the 2019 Association for Business Communication annual international conference in Detroit, Michigan. These assignments are designed to add fuel to oral and written persuasion, including the practical use of rhetorical tools. Ideas to advance learners' professional development are presented.…

This study aims to investigate the relationship between effective communication and transferring information. In the present correlational study, a cross-sectional research design was employed, and data were collected using a questionnaire-based survey. 46 students were chosen based on random sampling and questionnaires were distributed among…

This article highlights an important role of speech studies disciplines in teaching students to create business discourse, stresses practical orientation of teaching, a need to achieve a greater and more effective balance of theory and practice. The article presents innovative forms of teaching students to create and percept institutional business…

"Demonstrations" (e.g., direct quotations, conversational facial portrayals, conversational hand gestures, and figurative references) lack conventional meanings, relying instead on a resemblance to their referent. Two experiments tested our theory that demonstrations are a class of communicative acts that speakers are more likely to use…

Students have social and personal needs to fulfill and communicate these needs in different ways. This annotated bibliographic review examined communication studies to provide educators of diverse classrooms with ideas to build an environment that contributes to student well-being. Participants in the studies ranged in age, ability, and cultural…

This study aimed at describing how the implementation of Task-Based Learning (TBL) would shape or change students' use of oral communication strategies. Students' problems and strategies to solve the problems during the implementation of TBL were also explored. The study was a mixed method, employing both quantitative and qualitative analysis…

Students from six countries--Australia, Japan, Mexico, Sweden, Taiwan, and the United States--recalled the extent to which their best or worst professors used various forms of communication that have been associated with effective teaching. Across cultures, best professors were perceived to employ more nonverbal expressiveness, relaxed movement,…

Student-led chapter presentations provide an excellent opportunity for instructors to evaluate a student's comprehension of the assigned chapter, as well as the student's ability to present and convey information in a public forum. Although several instructors realize the benefits of requiring students to complete chapter presentations either as…

Objective: Students will identify several unique characteristics of verbal vs. visual messages, including the superior ability of language to communicate objective, factual, philosophical content in past, present, and future terms; and the superior ability of visual images to communicate social-emotional meaning and concrete information limited in…