One course in persuasion reviews six theories of attitude change--five based on Otto Lerbinger's designs for persuasive communication (cognitive design, stimulus response design, motivational design, personality design, and social design), and a sixth (perceptual design) developed by the instructors. Instruction in each includes a variety of…

Speech communication teachers can assist students in gaining more facility with language by helping them become active learners or problem solvers through: (1) experiencing an event; (2) reflecting on this experience which leads to (3) the formation of abstract concepts and generalizations about what has been learned; and finally (4) incorporating…

Describes the approach taken by the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs to communication-across-the-curriculum courses and programs. (SR)

An introductory speech communication course should contain a unit on communication ethics so that students learn ethical standards and how they should be applied in creating and delivering a message or responding to a message. One of the many hinderances that accompany incorporating such a unit into the curriculum is the lack of precedence for…

Reviews surveys on the status of the basic speech communication course. Identifies issues and concerns about instructional approaches, staffing, textbooks, philosophy, etc. (PD)

Reminiscences by a speech teacher of her encounters with persons who influenced her life and her selection of a discipline to study. Also recounts her experiences teaching speech courses at Northwestern University. (NKA)

Intended for use by instructors of upper division speech courses, this paper describes a questioning and answering technique for teaching argumentation. The first section of the paper discusses the concept of argumentative exchange, which is defined as an episode between two or more individuals wherein one or more feel that differences of belief…

The speech communication department at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, provides a rigorous and legally oriented course in freedom of speech. The objectives of the course are to help students gain insight into the historical and philosophical foundations of the First Amendment, the legal/judicial processes concerning the First Amendment, and…

Despite a professional commitment to "teach ethics," speech communication literature and textbooks contain almost no advice or help on how to accomplish this task. An integrated teaching approach, however, can involve students more directly in the ethical issues that may arise in a persuasion course. The first element in increasing student…

Serving as an introduction to a conference for Australian educators on developing oral communication skills, this paper reviews current methods of teaching speech skills. The paper describes a basic approach that holds that a learner's improved use of a skill is related to the number of satisfying experiences the learner has using the skill. It…

Describes a small but successful intercollegiate competitive public speaking program. Success was related to formation of good student-teacher relationships, a productive organizational psycho-environment, and careful teaching of public speaking fundamentals. (Author/RC)

The "process option" approach for speech students should be expanded through the development of a learning context in which (1) topic development replaces last minute subject selection through the spoken equivalent of freewriting, (2) the revision process of writing occurs in preparation for delivered speeches, (3) student/teacher…

Successful speech should rest not on prepared notes and outlines but on genuine oral discourse based on "data" fed into the "software" in the computer which already exists within each person. Writing cannot speak for itself, nor can it continually adjust itself to accommodate diverse response. Moreover, no matter how skillfully…