To investigate several questions concerning the perceptions held by undergraduate students enrolled in communication courses, a 32-item questionnaire was first mailed to employers to determine their evaluation of various communication skills. They were instructed to suppose they were to hire a college graduate with special preparation in the…

Older, nontraditional students are appearing with increasing frequency in conventional basic communication classes, and the unique learning needs of this group present a challenge to instructors, who must take into consideration the following: (1) the challenge of the learning process itself, (2) basic problems or concerns of the adult within the…

A study explored the universality of widely accepted descriptors of the ideal speaking voice in cross-gender and cross-cultural perspective. To construct and contrast the ideal voice types, university students from Mexico and Arizona described the ideal voice type under consideration and completed a semantic differential indicating the collective…

Effective oral interpretation, like effective communication, is self-revealing. Teachers and students of oral interpretation can improve analysis and performance of the literature by remaining aware of, first, their own involvement in the presentation and, second, the effect of this personal involvement on the audience. In the performance of oral…

Many two-year and four-year colleges are facing the task of instructing students who are underprepared. In the field of speech communication the problem is compounded because some students are not only academically deficient but are also communicatively apprehensive. Several courses of action must be taken to help lessen the problem. Eighty-six…

The school of communication at Northern Arizona University identified four areas--survey, written, oral, and theory--to be included in the core curriculum for all communication majors. As a follow-up to the deliberation by the school's curriculum committee, a study was undertaken to determine if such central curricula could be found in similar…

Research has shown that cooperative learning rather than competitive behavior enhances students' achievement, self-esteem, and satisfaction while reducing performance anxiety. Although cooperation within a small group results in greater productivity and member satisfaction, it should be considered only as a means to an end, not an end in itself. A…

This paper begins with a literature review of the objectives of general education, giving special consideration to the possible role of communications skills. Because of current discussion and disagreement about what the basic general education requirements of a university should include, a survey was administered in 1981-82 to full-time faculty…

A classroom-oriented therapeutic program was devised for four pragmatically impaired preschoolers who showed little spontaneous language use within the classroom. Intervention strategies focused on facilitating interactions during free play and were based on four principles for practitioners: be child-oriented; engineer the environment; use…

A study of the preferences of 49 college honors students enrolled in a basic speech-communication course demonstrated that current teaching practices in honors courses do not match the students' optimal learning styles. The students answered questions about their expectations and experiences in an honors speech-communication course and 25 of them…

Defining the media experience as the media and social interaction involved in any person's viewing of television and the consequences of that viewing for oneself and others, this paper examines how phenomenology and psychodrama--methods of experiential learning focusing on the feeling and imagining functions of communication--can be used to teach…

A study examined age differences in the use of interaction management strategies. Students (13 seventh-graders and 24 eleventh-graders) were asked to describe how to play a game to a peer. Each speaker then became a listener in the next dyad. A tally was kept of speaker and listener use of six categories of feedback, and the quality of that…

As an aid in integrating videotape procedures into effective speech communication programs, this report discusses the advantages and disadvantages of videotaping, provides guidelines for the use and purchase of equipment, and suggests classroom and extracurricular activities involving videotape. After indicating several positive characteristics,…

To help adults develop an awareness of midlife issues, to encourage personal acceptance of the transition, and to introduce appropriate coping skills, a speech communication course was designed that relied on river trip activities to develop insights about this passage. The vehicle for the seminar was a four-day raft trip down the Green River,…

Teachers confronted with the task of teaching or assessing listening skills should realize that competence in listening is acquired by knowing and doing and is evidenced by appropriate feedback or response. Various state curriculum and assessment projects have identified and grouped competencies in listening according to function, such as sensing,…