Simulation was used as a teaching method in a family communication class to foster a feeling of empathy with others. Although the course was originally designed to be taught as a seminar, the large number of students prompted the division of students into groups of five or six, characterized as families, each of which was to discuss concepts and…

The erosion of students' ability to use the printed word caused by electronic media has led some communication scholars to predict that a new literacy of communication may be needed for the future. Activities enhancing awareness and analysis of telecommunications and performance in telecommunications can easily be integrated into the speech…

A study compared mothers' and fathers' speech patterns when speaking to preschool children, particularly utterance length, sentence types, and word frequencies. All of the children attended a nursery school with a student population of 136 in a large urban area in the Southwest. Volunteer subjects, 28 mothers and 28 fathers of 28 children who…

Intended for administrators and policymakers as well as teachers, this digest explores methods of listening and speaking skills assessment. The digest first provides a rationale for teaching and assessing listening and speaking skills. It then examines definitions of oral communication and listening, noting (1) the trend toward defining oral…

In addition to serving as executive enclosures, offices illustrate organizational goals and reflect the communication climate of the organization. Traditional office designs accentuate personal territory, in which communication is largely controlled by the occupant of the office, and space often becomes a symbol of status. One of the first major…

The curriculum guide consists of a set of assessment tools, curriculum decision guidelines, instructional recommendations, and sample activities focused on teaching basic social and communication skills to children with autism and severe developmental handicaps. Section One provides an introductory discussion of issues related to effective…

An instructional model for developing skills in job-related interaction among students of English as a second language (ESL) is proposed and discussed. The rhetorical communication process model, adapted for ESL students, gives detailed attention to the encoding and decoding processes of mainstream English-speakers and allows the ESL speaker to…

Project CHIME (Children with Hearing Impairments in Mainstreamed Environments) develops and implements strategies that promote effective preschool mainstreaming of selected hearing-impaired children, ages 2-5 in Nassau County, New York. Written for parents of preschool children with hearing impairments, this handbook contains background…

To investigate the speech of black college students for nonfluencies--linguistic elements breaking the flow of words or ideas--and to ascertain if students' attendance of a largely black or largely white university influenced their use of nonfluencies, 21 black students at a predominantly black university and 25 black students at a predominantly…

To derive a descriptive profile of communication role patterns and to determine whether these patterns were gender dependent, a Gender Communication Scale was developed by selecting scale items from other instruments that best discriminated reports of role behavior. The scale was then administered to 91 male and 148 female undergraduate students.…

Verbal and nonverbal dimensions of communication are a vital part of competitive group discussion. Specific nonverbal elements that have been found useful in competitive group discussion include environment, proxemics, kinesics, objectics, and chronemics. For example, equalizing arrangements for the discussion in the best area of a room enhances…

To explain some of the problems and questions concerning the study of communicative competence, this paper discusses observations that motivate activity in the area and several issues generated by the observations, and suggests implications of the issues raised. The observations discussed first are that humans manage to get things done…

Some of the difficulties involved in teaching inside maximum security prisons, and ways a media studies teacher met these challenges, are described in this paper. The first section of the paper deals with the prison security system and the stresses it can cause for both teacher and student, while the second section discusses the influence of the…

To test two competing paradigms of the arousal-learning relationship--(1) increases in subject arousal will lead to increased learning in all but extreme cases of excitation, and (2) high subject arousal yields poor immediate memory but high ultimate memory--92 college students were presented with a tape recorded message in varying classroom…

Sixty-five organizations responded to a survey designed to gather data for use in curriculum development in organizational communication. A five-item questionnaire was used to elicit information concerning (1) competencies needed for specialists in an organizational communication center or department; (2) educational background desirable for such…