This document summarizes the practical advice for improving parent/teacher communication through written messages and telephone conversations provided in two documents written by Michael L. Henniger of Central Washington University: (1) "Building Parent/Teacher Relations through Written Communication" (ED 211 216); (2) "The…

Teachers and students were found to use verbal interruptions differently. The amount of time used by students initiating talk before interruption was also found to be different between students. (RC)

Examines patterns of oral communication in encounter groups and identifies three stages of group life: boundary-seeking, ambivalence and actualization. (MH)

Three types of jokes are distinguishable according to the style of speech used: 1) the merely prosaic joke, 2) the joke with a fictitious dialogue, and 3) the dialogue joke. These are analyzed in terms of communication, discourse analysis, and semantics. (Text is in German.) (DS)

Describes various aspects of a teaching unit on communication. Students read several stories, discussed problems they encountered in communicating with their families and studied differences between teenage slang and their parents' language. (HMV)

Determined the effects of four counselor stimulus conditions on three measures of client verbal behavior: reflection of feeling, probe, confrontation, and unspecified responses. The three dependent variables were client affect words, self-referent pronouns, and present verb tense. (Author)

A test of relative effectiveness of visual and verbal modes of giving instructions. (CH)

A method for analyzing connected discourse beyond paragraph length is demonstrated. (JH)

This study involved 208 children and their mothers. It tested the effect on the child's self-esteem of the way the mother interacts verbally with the child. In general, descriptive responses are more effective than judgmental ones. (Author)

In the "Gorgias," Plato focuses attention upon the value of dialectic as opposed to rhetoric, as well as the status of orators as opposed to philosophers. Through his agent, Socrates, Plato confirms dialectic as a legitimate endeavor while calling into question the place of rhetoric. Socrates is portrayed as a director who enacts a…

This study compared infants' responsiveness to modeling versus instruction and examined the issue of whether providing supplementary linguistic information makes modeling and instruction more or less effective. A total of 72 infants between 15 and 21 months of age participated in the study. Subjects were randomly assigned to conditions which…

A study tested the prediction that men's and women's relative responses to the Argumentativeness Scale will change if the items are worded consistently so as to make more or less salient the content and process dimensions of arguing. Respondents, 564 students enrolled in basic public speaking courses at Ball State University, were each provided…

The bibliography contains over 50 annotated citations of research on the nature of maternal speech and its effects on child language development. It is limited to studies focusing on verbal features of mothers' speech to normal one-to-four-year-olds learning English. The first section is devoted to literature describing characteristics specific to…

Effects of age and gender of preschool children and sex of parent on parental teaching strategies in a fantasy play situation were examined. Relations of parental strategies to children's fantasy play were assessed. Play sessions were held in a small playroom equipped with materials which facilitated dramatic production. The linguistic strategies…

Every day, observations and predictions are made about people's gender on the basis of their communicative behaviors and the roles individuals play in their culture. Although interest in the relationship between biological sex and communication may be traced to the beginning of this century, much of the research on gender and communication has…