Explores two non-academic programs concerned with improving communication effectiveness. Notes contrasting methods of evaluating speeches. (MH)

Discussed student-developed career meetings in which guest speakers provided students with information about their work experience. (RK)

The academic present and the academic future are linked to the past as a consideration of the combative, or agonistic, structure of historic academic life indicates. (JH)

Stresses the importance of verbal elaboration when discussing general semantics in the presence of a neophyte, pointing out that definitional or illustrative emendations attached to mnemonic devices may be particularly useful to the listener. (Author/RB)

The structure of speaker-auditor interaction was explored, using detailed language transcriptions and body-motion behavior. Three signals were hypothesized: a speaker within-turn signal, an auditor back-channel signal, and a speaker continuation signal. Signal sequences marked speaking turn units of interaction. (CK)

A study was conducted to test the relationship between communication apprehension (CA) and learning. Subjects were 194 college students at a midwestern university enrolled in an introductory speech course who were divided by scores on the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA). The groups heard a class presentation and were then…

There are a number of views of the relationship between language and thinking. Two prominent figures in developmental psychology, Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, proposed theories of language and thinking which also involve the notion of "communication." For Piaget, thinking develops first, and language comes along as an expression of…

Communication training efforts in American business have increased steadily for the past several years. While this increase may be viewed as positive from several vantage points, it has not been matched by an increase in any systematic application of evaluation measures. Effective evaluation should take place at various levels. D. L. Kirkpatrick…

A participant in forensic tournament competition presents her perspective as well as overall student reaction to the function of "warm bodies," competitors who are entered in a tournament by the coach or tournament director only to meet qualifying requirements. Overall, participants in an informal survey believed that the warm body…

Aristotle rejects a world vision of changing reality as neither useful nor beneficial to human life, and instead he reaffirms both change and eternal reality, fuses motion and rest, and ends up with "well-behaved" changes. This concept of motion is foundational to his world view, and from it emerges his theory of knowledge, philosophy of…

A study investigated the relationship between shared communication links and the process of organizational innovation in a privately owned medical clinic providing comprehensive medical care to children and adults. Participants were the physicians and physician assistants employed at the clinic. Data were collected through questionnaires before…

Presenting an historical overview of the development of speech courses at Millersville University (Pennsylvania), this paper analyzes the past, present, and future status of speech communication within the context of the general education curriculum. The historical perspective treats the origins and definition of speech as a college course…

In many college and high school forensics tournaments, the topic agenda is derived from "Newsweek,""Time," and "U.S. News and World Report." This use of three profit-oriented, widely circulated magazines as the agenda setting basis of extemporaneous speaking competition is philosophically and substantively damaging.…

Arguing that any discussion of debate theory is incomplete without at least some analysis or review of paradigm theory, this paper begins by analogizing the arguments over paradigms to a battle ground over control of the activity. The analysis then shifts to an examination of Thomas Kuhn's sociological theory as a basis for the argument that the…