To provide special instruction for students who report fear and avoidance of communication, a reticence program was instituted at Pennsylvania State University. Since the school has a general speech requirement that nearly all students have to meet in order to graduate, students are given an opportunity to enroll in this special section if they…

All content areas utilize the four basic skills--reading, writing, arithmetic, and oral communication. Children's literature can be used to teach these skills for four reasons: (1) there is a children's book for every concept to be taught; (2) children enjoy reading; (3) children's literature can be used to teach content, process, values, and…

Documented sex differences in speech and their significance are considered. The research literature on sex-differentiated speech reveals the influence of sex-role stereotypes and assumptions about the relation of speech to sex-differentiated socialization. The more substantiated differences form three clusters: (1) the production of esteemed…

A survey was conducted to determine the feasibility and availability of inservice communication skills workshops for Illinois elementary and secondary school teachers. Twenty-four college communication department administrators responded to questions regarding the availability of such workshops, and 174 public school district superintendents…

Personnel directors of 42 Fortune 500 companies responded to a questionnaire designed to elicit information on (1) the predominant communication-related job titles in those companies, (2) which of those positions communication majors were qualified to fill, and (3) what academic preparations were most useful for such positions. All respondents…

Developed for a course in social psychology, a guided design unit was created to help students explore the phenomena known as communication apprehension, reticence, and shyness. The social psychological theories introduced in the unit are belief theory, attribution theory, and perception theory. These theories are used to explain the phenomena…

Acknowledging the need for objective evaluation of the focus and organization of the basic speech communication course, this paper reviews the progress of the basic course by tracing its changes and development. The first portion of the paper discusses the evolution of the basic course from the 1950s to the present, giving specific attention to…

To examine political debate formats with regard to past usage and future possibilities, an analysis was made of the format features of the 1960, 1976, and 1980 general election presidential debates. Also analyzed were the formats used in the primary debates for Democratic presidential candidates in 1976 and for the Republican presidential…

These five papers reflect a single project--discourse analysis in the curriculum. The first paper, "The Small Group Course as a Setting for Naturalistic Research" (Charles Petrie and Charles Laufersweiler), describes the teaching process of integrating both a graduate and an undergraduate class from which the other four papers describe resulting…

Acknowledging the value of peer evaluation in the classroom, this paper describes the peer evaluation system used in a basic speech communication course at an Ohio university. The first section of the paper defines peer evaluation and describes the situation at the university to provide some understanding of the context in which the system was…

Working on the assumption that members of organizations create their own organizational reality by interpreting the behaviors and activities they see, the stories and myths about the organization that they hear, and pressures to conform to the norms and practices of the organization that they feel, a study examined a total of 58 stories collected…

Intended to enhance adult leadership skills, the 4-H Debate Project, developed by the 4-H Communication Committee of Delaware County (Pennsylvania), was designed to (1) increase the members' knowledge of library skills through research, (2) make them aware of current issues, (3) help them to become better public speakers and communicators, (4)…

Since contemporary media have an undisputed effect on the shaping of the social values of society, careful training of communication media specialists is needed, as well as unified international policies for such training. In a rapidly advancing technological society, the media communicator's task is twofold: first, to firmly grasp and conquer…

Communication consulting is one way academicians can help businesses to improve their employees' communication skills. Benefits teachers can derive from "academic" consulting include (1) experience that can supplement classroom materials, (2) opportunities for research in "real" settings, (3) additional income, and (4) personal…

Twenty-two interviews were conducted with the owner, managers, employees, suppliers, customers, and competitors of an auto dealership employing 91 people in order to examine the oral traditions of that company. The interviews provided data on management styles, dynamics of the managers' interaction, general language usage, paralanguage, favorable…