An open-ended survey was sent to speech communication department heads to determine their perceptions about forensics as an educational activity. Results showed that administrators overwhelmingly considered debate to have been the most important educational activity they engaged in when they were students; they attributed many of their…

This paper describes an undergraduate course called "Applied Communication in Training and Development," which educates students for life while helping them to see the practical application of what they are learning, and also reaches outside the university to meet the training and development needs of the larger community. The paper…

The Japanese presence in the United States is growing rapidly in business and higher education. With many communication courses enrolling both Japanese and American students, the instructor is faced with a challenging opportunity: to institute course work in intercultural communication. However, when an intercultural course is not feasible, an…

Rapidly changing demographics are forcing more and more Americans to interact with people who are different from themselves. Americans must become more sensitive to cultural diversity. One way to address this challenge at the university level is to offer courses in intercultural communication. At one university, an upper level course in…

One of a series of semiannual reports, this publication contains 18 articles which report the status and progress of studies on the nature of speech, instrumentation for its investigation, and practical applications. Articles and their authors are as follows: "Phonology and Beginning Reading Revisited (Isabelle Y. Liberman); "The Role of…

This curriculum guide contains lesson plans and students handouts for a 12-week (24-class) course on presentation skills. The course has the following objectives: encourage nonnative English speakers to become more expressive and persuasive in their communication; empower students to set and achieve goals; enhance students' ability to convey…

Focusing on ethics in public relations from a multicultural point of view brings together elements which are critical to international public relations. The Public Relations-Ethics-Multicultural (PREM) model illustrates that articles can be found in the literature on ethics, public relations, and multicultural as individual concepts. The…

This study examined the impact of play context on the speech of mothers and children. It was expected that the types of speech produced by both children and mothers when they played with toys that involve fine motor manipulation would differ from the speech produced when they played with toys that involve gross motor play. Sixteen children (eight…

A study investigated how people make indirect refusals ("You don't need to move the bookcase" meaning "No, I won't help you move it"), and the types of information used to do so. Two experiments were conducted. The first asked 130 students (third, fifth, and eighth graders as well as college undergraduates) to write refusals to…

When critical thinking skills are set adrift from course content, teachers soon fall prey to using critical thinking skills as techniques for getting students to succeed in class rather than surviving outside the classroom. However, the majority of writers in critical thinking skills agree that the skills are not subject-specific, are teachable,…

A pilot study investigated the relationships of career indecision, communication anxiety, and attrition of university students. Ten honors students from a college of arts and sciences were invited to a 3-day intensive focus on career decision making. The honors students reported satisfaction with the 3-day program. Information from these students…

The growth of intercultural interactions increases the need for nonverbal communication competency to help obviate potential cross cultural communication difficulties. Foreign language studies too often concentrate on vocabulary, grammar, and syntax, and forgo the role and methods of nonverbal communication. Japanese culture and modes of…

Several quasi-experimental and experimental studies of learning outcomes associated with Oral Communication across the Curriculum (OCXC) activities have been conducted at Radford University, Virginia. Two such studies assessing the effectiveness of OCXC in non-speech courses highlight the difficulties involved in conducting research into…

The Department of Communication at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks restructured its major requirements to prepare majors for a multicultural world. After constructing a new mission statement, the faculty reviewed the requirements for its majors to see how much the current major requirements supported the mission. Four conclusions were reached.…

A serious study of discourse particles (DIPs) must be founded on the analysis of orality in its two main dimensions: oral communication in its ordinary functioning (i.e., discourse, conversation, enunciation), but also in expression ritualized by the oral tradition of cultures that do not have a writing system. The association of the two…