A metacritical judging model for contest oral interpretation that evaluates the performer's critical decisions is designed to meet three criteria: (1) it attempts to incorporate the advances of oral interpretation scholars outside the forensics community with the activity at forensics tournaments, (2) it recognizes that forensics competition is…

Appropriate software can turn the microcomputer from the dumb box into a teaching tool. One resource for finding appropriate software is the organization Edunet. It allows the user to access the mainframe of 18 major universities and has developed a communications network with 130 colleges. It also handles billing, does periodic software…

Scholars have long been interested in the relation between rhetoric and dialectic. Recent theorists suggest that one way of viewing argument is through the perspective of argument-as-procedure, in which rules such as those attendant to the conduct of dialectic, debate, or discussion come under the purview of argumentation. This paper is a critical…

Given that overt linguistic behavior is not an adequate or primary datum for linguistic theory and that linguistic theory cannot directly account for overt linguistic behavior, human language can be seen as an abstract system that relates (graphic or phonetic) surface representations of sentences and underlying grammatical forms and semantic…

Defining "information overload" as the condition that occurs when the amount of available information exceeds the ability of the user to process it, this paper contends that this condition has now affected the arena of academic debate. The first section of the paper examines the nature of overload and discusses its consequences on the…

A review of communication models and research reveals four areas of communications skill: listening, empathy, non-verbal communication, and expressive abilities. Models of listening behavior suggest that, rather than being a passive activity, listening involves sorting stimuli and encoding messages, analyzing listener needs, and assessing speaker…

To analyze listening in relationship to other communication modes and to investigate the relative utility of four models for communication theory building research (national, psychological, organizational culture, and situational), a study examined the attitudes of middle level managers of six corporations regarding communication competencies…

Designed to serve as a framework from which high school debate students, coaches, and judges can evaluate the issues, arguments and evidence present in the availability and quality of water resources in the United States, this booklet provides guidelines for research on the 1985-86 debate resolutions selected by the National Federation of State…

To document procedures used in the early stages of introducing programs of Speaking and Listening across Disciplines (SALAD) in higher education, this descriptive report examines the "start-up" strategies for SALAD in eight institutions: Alverno College (Wisconsin), Central College (Iowa), Clarkson University (New York), DePauw…

Because increased technology too often is an inappropriate means to deal with contemporary social and educational needs, there is a need for academics to stress ethical and ecological values to students who may otherwise expect to seek a "quick fix" for societal ills through "high tech" solutions without sensitivity to the…

Fallacies are defined as incorrect patterns of reasoning, and can be classified into two chief classes--formal fallacies, which involve violation of a rule, and informal fallacies, such as hasty generalizations or arguing from ignorance. Inspired by George Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language" and his book "1984,"…

It has been said that the contribution of Franz Rosenzweig and Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy to the social sciences is their understanding of speech and time. Rosenstock-Huessy criticized modern communication theory because it assumes that one communicates to express thought, claiming instead that because speech necessitates the presence of a listener,…

When designing a workshop about communication and stress, it is important to consider the medical definition--that stress is a physiological reaction to an external force that is interpreted by the individual--and the psychological definition--which suggests that through communication with self one can change the stress in one's life. Stress can…

This research deals with a series of preliminary studies of the management of questions by second language learners of Swedish. Question management here refers to the ability to produce an utterance which successfully elicits a response from an interlocutor, and the ability to determine correctly when a response is required. The three exploratory…

Factors influencing the use of nonacoustic aids (such as visual displays and tactile devices) with the hearing impaired are reviewed. The benefits of tactile devices in improving speech reading/lipreading and speech are pointed out. Tactile aids which provide information on rhythm, rate, intensity, and duration of speech increase lipreading and…