Since speech communication evaluators are beginning to adapt the analytic and holistic instruments and methods used for rating written products to oral products and performance, this research review investigated: (1) what the labels "analytic" and "holistic" mean; (2) the theoretical bases of the two scoring approaches; and (3)…

In outline agenda form, this guide addresses the issue of training and supervising graduate students teaching the basic undergraduate speech course in university speech departments. The sections are as follows: (1) Introduction of staff and participants; (2) Rationale for assuring quality and standardization in the basic course by systematically…

Raymond Yeager, director of forensics and professor of speech at Bowling Green State University, has reflected the best qualties which forensics as a discipline has contributed to education. As teacher and debate coach, Raymond Yeager believed that only through the rigors of competition would his students be able to acquire and develop the skills…

A study was conducted to solicit information about Graduate Teaching Assistants' (GTA) training from all academic levels within graduate institutions and to make comparisons both down the hierarchical ladder and between speech communication and nonspeech graduate programs. Subjects were department chairs/heads from 270 nonspeech and 69 speech…

Noting that breaking off romantic relationships can be traumatic even when the end is welcome, this paper describes the strategies and stages of relationship termination and suggests ways for instructors of oral interpretation and/or interpersonal communication classes to illustrate such relational decay. The first section deals with relationship…

A large undergraduate course in persuasion which is taught to multiple sections of 70 students (and has in the past been taught to sections with as many as 200 students) at Northern Illinois University required several innovations to handle the large numbers of students and to enliven such large classes. Innovations include: (1) the creative use…

Educators in speech communication are confronted with determining what criteria comprise "disciplinary breadth" in basic courses. Such a course ought to teach students about the disciplinary perspective and process, promote active learning, emphasize methods of thinking characteristic of the discipline, and encourage life-long learning.…

Speaking across the curriculum (SAC) programs let students in on the educational act and thus require faculty members to attend to their own development as participants in communication interactions. When faculty development efforts are directed toward improved classroom teaching, they become important for SAC. As SAC programs have developed at…

The contention of this paper is that logicality and emotionality are not two poles of a continuum but orthogonal dimensions which may exist to varying degrees in an argument. It was hypothesized that: (1) logicality and emotionality would be perceived as independent components by subject; and (2) messages high in logic would have more influence on…

Within the field of composition, classical rhetoric was re-discovered in the early 1960s; that interest has been for the most part confined to the first three of the five parts of classical rhetoric--invention, arrangement, and style--with memory and delivery being ignored or, at least, neglected. Recent interest in "the speaking-writing…

Often colleges and universities that are just beginning to include technical communication in their curricula do so using faculty trained in traditional English doctorate programs. This digest examines several areas of concern for such institutions and discusses: (1) characteristics of technical communication; (2) issues in teaching technical…

Two institutions of higher learning in Oklahoma have successfully implemented an interactive computer-video system of instruction in their basic communication courses. The system will be made avaliable to other institutions. Four learning principles and their implementations comprise the heart of this system including behavioral objectives,…

This case study examined the shift of the communication major at Wesleyan College (Georgia) from a traditional emphasis to an interdisciplinary focus. Fuzziness of the image of communication as an academic discipline and faculty and administrative concerns about the degree of connectedness of the curriculum in relation to the liberal arts led to…

The community services department of an eastern community college offers a noncredit course called Overcoming Speech Anxiety. The students range from those who avoid conversation with most people to those who speak publicly often but with a great deal of discomfort. Their reasons for taking such a class suggest that most people suffer situational…

Artificial intelligence research on natural language understanding is discussed in this report using the notions that (1) natural language understanding systems must "see" sentences as elements whose significance resides in the contribution they make to the larger whole, and (2) a natural language understanding computer system must…