Ana De Carvalho and Tania Cabral write here that they think the learning process rests heavily on the ability of speech, so they recommend placing students more and more in the position of speaking. Not happy with prompt, correct answers, they confront their students with further related questions trying to establish if they have fairly consistent…

Discusses how writing can be used as a learning tool in language classes where oral production is stressed. (Text is in French.) (PMP)

A corpus of 400,000 words from Brazilian Portuguese conversation yielded 89,200 verb forms. The verbs are analyzed as to occurrence and function and many are listed in order of frequency. (CK)

The pressure to assess educational outcomes comes from a variety of national, regional, and state forces. The primary thrust of most current state initiatives is to encourage institutions to undertake their own appropriate local assessment efforts. The narrow view of assessment focuses upon the use of standardized tests to show the outcomes of…

Raymond Yeager, director of forensics and professor of speech at Bowling Green State University, has made a major contribution to the field of speech communication. He has been much appreciated as professor, mentor, and friend. Yeager, the personification of the "good man skilled in speaking," is a well-spoken gentleman of principle who…

One way to implement theory into existing public relations classes is to utilize the Process of Public Relations model developed by L. W. Long and V. Hazleton. The use of the model in the classroom is important because the model stresses the interdependence between the public relations practitioner and the organization. The model begins by…

Prominent contemporary theories of academic argument are based upon jurisprudential models where argument is analogous to forensic discourse. Yet the implications of classical notions of testimony and the rhetorical function of citation make academic argument more a deliberative activity than the forensic one suggested by contemporary theorists.…

This study examined the feedback choices made by 12 professors which they executed in their freshman/sophomore level speech communication performance-based courses. Each instructor tape recorded and coded two 10-minute feedback sessions. Each teacher also responded in free writing form about self-correcting perceptions subsequent to the coding of…

The framework presented in this manual is designed to provide school district personnel with guidelines for developing curricular programs for theater arts based upon the needs of students in their individual school districts. The manual furnishes goals and objectives upon which to build a series of sequential learning experiences for use in the…

To garner administrative support and to develop meaningful public relations in the academic, scholastic, and local communities, individual events program directors should focus their efforts on things over which they have control. First, directors should develop behavioral objectives for individual events programs which are consistent with the…

Theories of persuasion have long assumed a process which includes comprehension of the message by the recipient. Several hundred undergraduates at Ohio State University and Marshall University (Ohio) participated in six experiments examining persuasion and the use of unintelligible messages. Subjects in individual cubicles of a university language…

Institutional retrenchment is an on-going process in academia. So that crises can be avoided in the retrenchment process, every institution should develop processes both for the continual review of units by faculty colleagues and to ensure faculty participation in the management of the institution. Decisions about retrenchment should be based on…

Critical Incident Technique (CIT) involves the collection of real-world examples of behavior that characterize either very effective or very ineffective performance of some activity. The principal advantage of the CIT is that it generates data based on actual behavior rather than on a particular researcher's subjectivity. The CIT has much to offer…

An overview of the literature in family communication since 1976 reveals that a huge body of research continues to focus on the family context but that little of this research is being conducted by scholars whose primary interest is communication. Communication researchers could make a contribution to family communication research if they…

Comparing the manner in which contestants' scores were tabulated at both the 1985 American Forensic Association National Individual Events Tournament (AFA-NIET) and National Forensic Association Individual Events Nationals (NFA-IEN), a study (1) examined whether a correlation exists between contestants placing in the quarterfinals with five…