Surveys of employers continually highlight the need for better communication skills among recent college graduates. Yet, writing instruction in higher education serves far more than a transactional purpose. Writing facilitates learning, helps students gain skills in analysis and synthesis, and supports a range of other personal and intellectual…

An examination of oral communication education in the United States (U.S.) and United Kingdom (U.K.) identified four critical concerns: (1) Today's college students are not getting adequate oral communication education; (2) Oral communication education is being relegated to a "module" in another discipline-specific course; (3) When an…

Summarizing recent research on evaluative reactions toward Mexican American speech varieties, the paper obtained contrasting evaluative reactions for standard English versus standard Spanish, for standard English versus highly accented English, and for varying degrees of accented English. Anglo and Mexican American adolescents from a Chicago high…

Psychologists and linguists often suggest that empathy or role-taking ability is important in the communication process because it enables a speaker to consider in advance the informational demands of his audience. Despite the vintage of the empathy-effective communication hypothesis, it has never been directly tested. In this study, empathy was…

A study analyzed responses to indirect imperatives in a large doctor's office, looking specifically at superior-subordinate relationships in an organizational setting in order to see if there are different responses to indirect and direct imperatives, and what those differences involve. Twenty hours of interaction were audiotaped and observed…

Assessed the effects of two types of communicative cues on perceptions of dominance. Subjects viewed stimulus tapes of controlled conversations and rated each speaker. Results indicated that vocal participation contributed to perceptions of dominance more than open-ended or closed-ended questions. (Author/RC)

Demonstrates that the attentiveness construct can be accurately represented in terms of behavioral signals, sensitivities, and self-evaluations. Indicates that attentiveness is a function of posture, verbal behavior, and eye contact and demonstrates that attentiveness varies as a function of role status across differing contexts. (JMF)

Indicates the recognition on the part of chief executive officers that they are the company spokespersons and must have good communication skills in order to communicate effectively to the media and special interest groups. (EL)

Discusses two studies which indicate that student audiences rated speeches of their peers significantly higher if they thought that the speakers had completed a course in public speaking. (MH)

Conversation reminds us that we are not alone, that shared language is the opportunity to try on our many masks to see how many of them we can do without. The variety of pleasures accrued from conversation--"layers of pleasure"--deepen only as they move away from the individual orbits into the circle of mutual experience. When conversation is…

Defines educational drama as role-taking" which consists of creative work" and coping-work." (Author/SW)

A study was undertaken to determine the effect of role playing behavior as a variable in persuasive communication. Subjects were 52 male college students who were divided into two groups: those who held favorable attitudes toward the speech topic were assigned the role of speakers, and those who responded negatively toward the topics were assigned…

Four children, aged 3.9 to 5.5, were recorded talking to different listeners (adult, peer, baby and baby doll) and role-playing a "baby just learning how to talk." As a measure of the children's responsiveness to situational cues, each sample was analyzed for formal and functional characteristics. (Author/RM)

Two speeches by Betty Friedan, author of "The Feminine Mystique" and first president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), are examined in this paper. The first speech analyzed, "Tokenism and the Pseudo-Radical Cop-Out," was delivered at Cornell University in January, 1969, and the second, a "Call to Women's Strike…

To explore the relationship of language use and speech adaptation to role and context, the spontaneous speech of a 5-year-old boy was recorded in three different situations: playing alone, playing with a friend of the same age, and playing with his mother. (Author/SW)