To bring educational research into focus with tested classroom practice, this booklet provides an introduction to small group discussion. The theory and research section discusses the importance of small group discussion, characteristics of small group discussions, group attraction based on Maslow's hierarchy of basic human needs, group decision…

Intended for teachers of theatrical design who need to describe a design process for their students, this paper begins by giving a brief overview of recent research that has described the different functions of the right and left cerebral hemispheres. It then notes that although the left hemisphere tends to dominate the right hemisphere, it is the…

The Classroom Pairing System (CPS) for second language instruction is a simple pattern practice technique that allows students to practice orally with a partner. An advantage of the technique is that it allows maximum time on task for each student in a large class. Students hold picture cards in their hands, and the partners ask and answer…

Discussions of audience, such as those by Russell Long, Carol Berkenkotter, David Park, Lisa Ede, and Andrea Lunsford, most often do not utilize the research by speech rhetoricians to whom the question of audience has always been central. Chaim Perelman's conception of the "universal audience" and traditional, speech-oriented rhetoric…

Speech communication departments use a number of criteria when selecting a job candidate. In addition to good graduate training in the area advertised, the candidate should have a good record in research and publication or good prospects for such a record. Moving is inherent to healthy young academics and should be expected, but speech…

The overall structure of the proposed Master of Arts Degree in Applied Communication at Indiana University (Indianapolis) is interdisciplinary, in order to meet the many applied duties and functions of communication specialists, with special attention to be given to organizational communication and telecommunications. Each student will be required…

Recalling a program session at the 1981 annual meeting of the Speech Communication Association entitled "The Small College Speech Communication Instructor: Jacks and Jills of All Trades," this paper "revisits" that session by reviewing the comments and observations made then and offering reflections on the changes that have been observed in the…

The skills of playwriting are correctable, the craft of playwriting is teachable, and the art of playwriting is encourageable. In the area of craft, students can learn through models how accomplished playwrights deal with plot, characterization, dialogue, and theme. For the first element, plot development, students can look at written models to…

High school debate style should emphasize persuasion, information, and logic above other skills. Recent trends, such as excessive speed of delivery and excessive amounts of evidence used in debate, have tended to inhibit the effective acquisition of those skills for students. Potential methods for moderating speed and evidence use are not allowing…

Building communication theory in terms of three-variable relationships is a promising route to developing better theory, because three-variable relationships stand midway between sometimes overly simplistic two-variable relationships, and the more complex path analysis. The analysis of three-variable relationships has been done in many previous…

This report provides suggestions on how a language arts speaking skills assessment program could be structured to ensure that school districts meet the Common Curriculum Goals of the public elementary and secondary schools in Oregon. This report includes: (1) a list of common curriculum goals that relate to speaking; (2) general implications for…

An explanation of the experiential education model is presented in this paper by highlighting the strength and uniqueness of the experiential educational opportunities surrounding the campus radio station. Three perspectives are used to explain the model: structure and organization, workshop, and pedagogical philosophy. The paper utilizes…

The official college catalogues of the 25 institutions comprising the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) and the Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA) consortia were studied to provide descriptive information on the special needs and interests of smaller speech and theatre programs. Information on speech departments indicated three general…

To learn more about small group interactions, a study investigated the characteristics of women's conversation in its own right rather than compared to a male model of conversation. The researcher spent 10 months as a participant/observer in a women's weekly circle (WWC), a group of mothers of young children who met once a week. The researcher…

Several features can be predicted for the future of higher education in general and for the field of communication in particular. The first is based on the impact of technology, described by Naisbitt as the restructuring from an industrial society to one based on the creation and distribution of information. If the media and the computer become…