Stressing that the importance of listening carefully cannot be underestimated, this handbook describes the process of listening (including the five components--previous knowledge, listening material, physiological activity, attention, and intellectual activity), some barriers to efficient listening, and bad and good listening habits. It also…

Public relations as strategic communication is one possible theme for an introductory course in public relations. This perspective focuses attention on messages (their content, timing, media, and so forth) as strategic responses to the audience and the situation. It provides a defensible rationale for including certain relevant topics in the…

Three major categories of instruction for a course designed to teach community college students how to effectively listen are functional listening, awareness of auditory disabilities, and interpersonal listening. In functional listening, students learn to listen for the main idea, identify supporting points, summarize accurately, avoid…

This selective review of literature presents research and theory in support of the proposition that language is an essential component of early artistic development, and is crucial to the nature and nurture of visual expression. Young children frequently accompany drawing activities with descriptive, reflective, and social conversation, verbally…

This guide is intended to help school personnel, as well as community and private sector providers, make the most effective use of tours and guest speakers. The booklet offers a step-by-step guide to (1) designing a meaningful experience for students; (2) assuring the teacher of a successful and well-organized activity; and (3) giving the provider…

Oral language has primacy both developmentally and by virtue of use for most individuals in our society; however, the development of oral language for many children is left to chance. Although English education journals have resounded with exhortations to teachers about the importance of encouraging children to talk, the recent limited research…

Issues concerning the development of a pedagogically sound internship program, including objectives, student qualifications, requirements, evaluation, and the responsibilities of the director, are examined in this paper that explores the internship program development of the Speech Communication Department of St. Cloud State University at St.…

Noting that most graduate study in communication consists of specialization within the broader field, this paper argues that graduate level communication programs are not only justifiable but also are mandatory if students of communication are to advance much beyond the practitioner stage. The first section of the paper, "Graduate Communication…

Directors of forensics at research universities are subject to a conflict between attaining pedagogically justified goals for forensic activities and the realities incumbent upon the mission of a research university. The ideal, pedagogical view of forensics maintains that a forensics program should offer a broad range of activities, should be…

The course content of a laboratory session on patient interviewing taught to medical students taking a course on physical diagnosis is discussed in this paper. The first part of the paper describes the basic course content covered in the lectures: the bio-psycho-social model, the communication process, and the skills necessary for effective…

Recognizing the lack of research delineating what personality traits might predispose a person to poor listening, this paper contrasts two lines of research assessing how the cognitive and affective characteristics of speakers impact on their recall of conversation. The first section of the paper considers the theoretical perspective arguing that…

Noting that instructor and course evaluations represent important, ongoing concerns to students, faculty, and administrators in speech communication, this paper uses the experimental approach to consider the purposes of evaluations, explores major evaluation issues, reviews the literature concerning specific variables possibly related to these…

A three-phase study spanned five areas of interest: (1) the school as organization and social system, (2) roles and role behavior in organizations, (3) communication structure in organizations, (4) network analysis concepts, and (5) Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation-Behavior (FIRO-B). In phase one of the study, staff members listed…

This bibliography provides citations to studies of word/letter frequencies and vocabulary applications based on issues of word frequency. While the original intent was to gather information pertinent to developing communication board vocabularies for argumentative communication systems, these resources should be useful for a variety of word…

A model for adult language learning is developed based on the postulates that language is semiotic, contextual, communicative, and cultural. Research in psycholinguistics has discovered that a cognitive and recognitional knowledge of language underlies and is greater than performative language. The move from the first level, the semantic base, to…