A sharing period in the first grade can provide children with many opportunities for developing both personally and educationally (e.g., becoming aware of others' attitudes and expressing themselves orally). Moreover, much can be learned by the teacher about students' interests, needs, and abilities when they are encouraged to "brainstorm" such…

Interrelated and interacting rhetorical dimensions which influence the outcome and effectiveness of a communication can be identified. Interpersonal dimensions include (1) the degree of liking among persons involved in the rhetorical act, (2) power in the form of charisma or a power structure, and (3) distance, either interpersonal or social,…

Noting that, in recent years, college speech departments across the nation have been deleted, altered, or at least renamed, this paper examines various aspects of the disappearance of speech from the college curriculum. The following areas are considered: students' perception of speech as a nonmarketable major; disciplines to which latent speech…

Recently, there has been a growing interest in career education in the speech communication field. Parallel development of interest in organizational communication has provided the impetus for the institution of curricula to train students to perform the role of organizational-communication specialist. This paper outlines the elements of training…

This paper discusses speech communication's expansion as a discipline and its relation to the rest of the humanities. Focusing on the interpretation of literature, a speech communication course that relates to several other fields of study, the paper stresses the individual development that can occur through the experiences offered by the study of…

This study assessed the effect of room design on small-group communication patterns. Twenty-seven groups of three subjects each were assigned to nine types of rooms that differed with respect to shape, interior decoration, and other environmental elements. Subjects discussed a standard group-discussion topic. Data indicated that room design had no…

This paper outlines the structures of four career-oriented programs in speech communication at James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia. These programs were developed to serve the student (by addressing career needs and ambitions), the advisor (by helping students to select careers), and faculty member (by relating specific courses to the…

Intended for use by high school debaters and their teachers, this book provides guidelines for research on the debate topic for the 1978-1979 school year: "What should be the energy policy of the United States?" The first section is designed to broaden the student's comprehension of the debating process by focusing on the meaning of the…

An account is given of a teacher's experience with a new approach to language learning, the Silent Way. The teaching tools used in this method are few: colored rods, wall charts of words and signs in color, a pointer, the fingers of the teacher's left hand, and silence. Teaching is subordinated to learning, that is, teaching must not interfere…

This document presents contract grading as a system of evaluation for speech communication courses at the high school or college level. Contract grading can provide the means to reduce the element of threat that impedes effective interpersonal communication between teacher and student. Contract grading is a business like arrangement whereby the…

Intonation refers to the rise and fall of the pitch contour within a given tone group as distinguished from paralinguistic vocal features which refer to aspects like placement of contour in the pitch range of an individual, pitch span, loudness/softness, and features of voice quality. Intonation and paralinguistic vocal features perform at least…

Rhetorical activity is fundamental to the process of psychotherapy. This paper discusses a study of the consistent use of rhetorical strategies in distinctly different forms of psychotherapy as an initial step in analyzing the effectiveness or failure of therapeutic situations. The data for this two-part study consisted of eleven hours of…

A number of the historical and contemporary games of black children reflect an attitude of resistance and assertion on the part of the players. Older game songs, dating from the days of slavery, express a recreative anger against slave masters or a contempt for the theater image of the jolly plantation slave, Jim Crow. Post-Civil War songs and…

Because religious communicators deal with issues most profound and consequential to their audiences, it is imperative that they examine their motives, aspirations, and rhetorical methods, as well as the ethical dimensions of their communication. Religion operates, along with every other rhetorical system, in the world of contingency, of the…

This booklet describes how to set up a multisection college-level course in basic communication skills, built around the concept of "learning activities" conducted within a "learning center." The ideas presented are based on four years of experience in operating such a course at the University of Hawaii. The first section of…