Developing skills in soliciting, receiving, and responding effectively to critical or negative performance feedback is at least as important as delivering feedback well. Organizational Behavior courses, however, focus almost exclusively on teaching students how to deliver feedback. The purpose of this scenario-based classroom exercise is to…

Written expression is critical to the full participation of individuals with autism spectrum disorder and complex communication needs in a wide range of educational and community contexts. Unfortunately, the extant research on teaching writing to this unique population is limited and, thus, provides little guidance to practitioners in the design…

Supporting the development of skills associated with self-determination (e.g., goal setting and attainment, problem solving) and providing opportunities to practice those skills impacts valued school and postschool outcomes of students with complex communication needs. To address this need, the Self-Determined Learning Model of Instruction (SDLMI)…

Language barriers negatively affect access to social services, particularly for D/deaf populations who use Sign Language. "D/deaf" is used to encompass both the cultural conception of capital-D Deafness and the medical conception of lowercase-d deafness. Language translation/interpretation is a common need among practitioners of social,…

Self-determination, defined by acting as the causal agent in one's life, plays a critical role in the transition from high school to postsecondary education, employment, and community living for all students, including students with significant support needs. The "Self-Determined Learning Model of Instruction" (SDLMI) is a teaching model…

We live in the age of globalization where diverse cultures and nations mix and mingle. A lot of us live in a multicultural society in which macro- and microethnoses coexist. Cultures enrich each other, collaborate…and sometimes clash. Misunderstandings happen when people speak the same language, but do not share the same cultural codes. Edward…

Treatment intensity is an aspect of communication intervention that has received limited empirical attention. In this article, we discuss key parameters of treatment intensity related to individuals with complex communication needs who use augmentative and alternative communication. We advocate for an examination of treatment intensity along with…

Courses: Introduction to Communication Studies, Rhetorical/Media Criticism, Political Communication, Language and Social Interaction. Objectives: The aims of this single-class activity are (1) to emphasize the complexities of communication competence; (2) to differentiate between appropriate and inappropriate communication behaviors; and (3) to…

We should seek every possible method for educating immigrants and refugees and facilitating ­communication for them--especially during the current difficult times due to the spread of a killer-­ pandemic (i.e., Covid-19). To this end, I discuss the role which "metalanguage" could play in this regard, with reference to Natural Semantic…

Vocabulary learning that overlooks the discrimination of single sounds in English language learning could lead to communication difficulties, such as the inability to hear and speak English pronunciation. To address this issue, vocalization strategy, in which students listen to the sounds of words and memorize them aloud, is considered a useful…

This article discusses why pedagogical discourse analysis (PDA) can be seen as the departure point to teach through discourse and how language teachers can efficaciously use it in order to bring discourse analysis into the language classroom. To make PDA feasible in language teaching, it requires to be coordinated with actual discourse-based…

Jennifer Johnson discusses her work with the American College Educators-Deaf and Hard of Hearing (ACE-DHH) group to address maltreatment of children with communicative disabilities and deafness. The ACE-DHH Child Maltreatment Work Group has targeted two documents in which the inclusion of safety statements could protect deaf and hard of hearing…

Selective mutism (SM) is a childhood anxiety disorder characterized by the persistent failure to speak in situations where speech is typically expected (e.g., school), despite speaking in other situations (e.g., home; American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013). Immigrant children are more likely to be diagnosed with SM than the general…

Learning a language in a formal context is not the same as learning a language in a natural setting, in that the goal of one of the participants in the communicative events that occur in the classroom, the teacher, is to teach a language. For this reason, the majority of the actions undertaken by the participants are directed at achieving that…

Adolescents who are newcomers in a country and beginning to acquire English as an additional language are often in secondary classrooms with teachers who do not speak their languages. Due to these communication obstacles, there is a great need for teachers to build relationships with their students while setting optimal conditions for literacy…