Issues related to a national assessment of speaking and listening skills include the specification of the domain of communication competencies, the selection of measurement strategies, and the elimination of racial and ethnic bias. A project committee proposed that the domain of national assessment spans three dimensions: function (informing,…

Rhetoric is capable of producing preceptions which observed reality does not reveal to us. Because of rhetoric's reifying powers (that is, its ability to make abstractions concrete), it has been depended upon to make certain societal values come to life. In opposition to Jacques Ellul, an articulate exponent of the view that finds no existential…

Recently, communications scholars and theorists have begun formulating rules to describe the workings of language in various situations of everyday use. Theoretically, current rules approaches are in violation of the basic philosophy underlying communication theory--Whitehead's notion of process. The inconsistency is a function of the degree of…

A recurring puzzle in Aristotle's "Rhetoric" is the book's ethical stance; Aristotle gives practical advice on the use of persuasive discourse and intends it to be used in association with virtue, although the two seem to be separable. However, persuasion and virtue in Aristotle's theory of rhetoric have connections deriving from the…

Because children are exposed to highly professional sales pitches on television and because the old material produced by the Institute of Propaganda Analysis is outdated and in error, a new tool for the analysis of propaganda and persuasion is called for. Such a tool is the intensify/downplay pattern analysis chart, which includes the basic…

All of the television camera shots in the three Ford/Carter presidential debates were studied according to type, frequency, and duration to determine whether the images presented by the camera could have influenced the audience's perception of the candidates. According to the debate rules, each candidate was allowed three minutes to answer a…

This paper views communication as the major human survival tool. Any approach which limits or hampers the innate metabolic human ability to adapt, in order to maximize the chances for survival through communication, is thus seen as dangerous. Instead, a methodology is suggested to develop a communication sub-culture, to facilitate individual…

The two studies of predisposition toward verbal behavior (PVB) reported in this paper examined the behavior of interactants who have dissimilar verbal predispositions in task-oriented discussions. In the first study, 20 groups of three members each were given an interpersonal task that involved reaching a consensus. In the second study, 17 pairs…

"Communication competence" refers to the knowledge an individual has about the use of language in communication. As a concept and theory, however, it needs to be further elaborated and clarified. In particular, four issues must be resolved before communication competence theory can achieve full development and exert impact in the classroom. The…

This article describes the Modified Values Auction, a data-analytic classroom game. The game follows the paradigm of an auction and is designed to generate data on human values that are amenable to empirical analysis. An analysis of actual data from 54 undergraduate students is presented and research applications are suggested. (Author/AA)

This book contends that systematic oral and written exercises enable students to overcome many difficulties encountered in writing English. The first chapter is a general discussion of the teaching of composition today. The second section describes an experiment in oral composition drills in a seventh-grade class. The third section describes the…

This publication contains three parts, all related to the language arts curriculum of the Shawnee Mission Public Schools. The first section provides a detailed outline (with references) of sequenced components representing a progressively difficult set of experiences in reading, writing, speaking, and listening for kindergarten through third…

This paper argues that quality pre-law communication programs must be developed through an organized sustained effort in the speech communication field. The development of a pre-legal communication program is discussed in terms of three interrelated states: (1) the development of a specific academic program within the speech communication…

The educational resources related to organizational communication listed in this document consist of the following: 12 texts and readers, 75 reference books, 17 publishers active in the field, 2 bibliographies, more than 300 articles, almost 200 journals, over 50 films (with annotations), 9 film distributors, and sources of simulations and games.…

Talk, the foundation stone upon which all development of language is built, provides the basis for literary interpretation and thus has important repercussions in all the areas of reading and writing. Various activities can give high school students the opportunity to talk and to learn from the expression of others. Group discussion offers…