Interactive discourse structuring is used to guide listeners through on-going speech and has been shown to have a positive effect on lecture comprehension, particularly in L2 settings. As mobility increases in the academic world, there are more opportunities for lecture events characterized not only by linguistic/cultural diversity, but also by…

As digital portfolios become more prevalent in teacher education, the purposes and processes for creating them have become contested. Originally meant to be critical and reflective spaces for learning about multimedia and conceived as contributing to professional growth, research shows that digital portfolios are now increasingly being used to…

As part of a larger project, a ninth-grade class participated in a year-long exchange of writing with students in an inner-city London classroom. The larger project involved 10 San Francisco Bay Area sixth- through ninth-grade classes exchanging writing with nine inner-city London classes and a Swedish class. Students and teachers in each of the…

The communication theory and methodology section of the Proceedings contains the following 20 papers: "Political Adwatches and the Third-Person Effect" (Ekaterina Ognianova and others); "Understanding Adopters of Audio Information Services" (Kimberly A. Neuendorf and others); "A Principal-Agent Approach to the Study of…

The communication technology and policy section of the Proceedings contains the following 11 papers: "The Battle for the Net Frontier: Technology and Policy in an Age of Hype and Sensationalism" (Jan H. Samoriski); "Uses and Gratifications of the World Wide Web" (Barbara K. Kaye); "Comparing Consumer Feedback Channels:…

Discussion of one form of pragmatic competence, projecting a sense of stylistic voice into texts, explores how writing in a non-native language affects the ability to express stylistic voice and enter into social dialogue with readers. Using the published reflections of authors writing professionally in a non-native language, the analysis shows…

A study was conducted to determine if audience-tailored videotapes and the format of follow-up discussions can change audience attitudes. Sixth-grade students in Taiwan were given a survey on their attitudes toward elderly people. Scripts for videotapes were written based on the data obtained from the survey. Children found to have a negative…

This manual offers guidelines for developing health and family planning support materials for illiterate and low-literate groups. The techniques used rely heavily on involvement of the target audience. Following the introduction, each of the nine sections of the guide discusses a separate step in the materials development process: (1) "target…

A study extended a previous study (Sparks and Spirek, 1988) by examining children's individual differences in coping with stressful mass media. The investigation proposed that scores on the Children's Coping Measure (CCM) are related to the intensity of negative affect children experience while watching a frightening program. Eighty-two fifth and…

This report is part of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's triennial assessment of the needs and interests of minority and diverse audiences, including ethnic minorities, recent immigrant groups, adults lacking basic reading skills, and people who use English as a second language. The assessment took the form of a conference which brought…

The 1992 presidential campaign put the idea of the electronic town meeting firmly on the political scene, and each of the presidential debates during that campaign experimented with the town meeting format. This paper reviews the tradition of town meeting democracy in the United States and proposes ways to carry that tradition on with the help of…

Two in-house communication training seminars--the first a two-hour seminar for transmission technicians and the second a six-week course for nurses and hospital technicians--were held to improve technical communication. In the first, service technicians were helped to analyze their audience--their manager and company engineers--as a motivation…

The entire process of legal writing would be shorter and more effective if writers would give as much attention to the politics of the rhetorical situation as they do to legal research. To do that requires the following considerations: (1) understanding the three dramatic elements in the rhetorical situation (audience, purpose, tone); (2)…

Socialization is generally considered the process of making individuals "fit" for living in society. To understand the specific social role of the media, their particular place among agencies of socialization, and the real possibilities of a democratization of mass communication, the question should be inverted to ask, "Who makes…

One of the tasks for the British National Curriculum Council has been to identify steps toward proficiency in the English language and, on that basis, issue descriptions of appropriate progress for students at each level and stage. There is a danger that teachers may view these steps as a linear sequence of accomplishments, each to be achieved in…