A study was conducted to determine how well speech communication departments prepare graduate teaching assistants to teach basic communication courses. Questionnaire responses were obtained from 124 graduate departments of speech communication or theater on the number of teaching assistants, their responsibilities, the percentage of undergraduates…

IT HAS BEEN SUGGESTED THAT THE EMOTIONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PEOPLE CAN BE INVESTIGATED BY STUDYING THEIR VERBAL BEHAVIOR. THIS STUDY INVESTIGATED THE USE OF EMOTIONAL WORDS, BOTH POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE, AND THE TOTAL VERBAL OUTPUT OF NORMAL AND DISORDERED CHILDREN TO DETERMINE IF SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES IN VERBAL EXPRESSION OCCUR. TWO GROUPS OF…

Findings of a seminar which explored the current linguistics methods of teaching elementary reading and examined the background of this approach and some programs constant with it are presented. The seminar established the following set of criteria for describing the important characteristics of a linguistics method: (1) task definitions of…

A research project was aimed at measuring the relationship between infant vocalizations and linguistic development and determining the feasibility of using infant vocalizations as a predictor of later psychological and intellectual status. However, a method was needed to analyze the vocalizations of infants. This report describes a method used to…

To aid recent adult immigrants to the United States in learning English, a student guide with the same extensive sentence and work patterns as in the teachers' guide (AC 003 121) has been prepared to complement oral drill by teachers and tapes. Dialogues dealing with common situations a person meets in daily life have been designed to provide oral…

After 750 combined hours of analysis, the authors discovered major verbal and nonverbal communication differences between the candidates in the three Ford/Carter debates. The research was based on an analysis of 7,378 specific nonverbal behaviors and on 955 verbal references found in the 30,852 word transcripts. The researchers found differences…

The use of exercises and games in teaching the process of public speaking provides a novel and effective approach for teacher and student. This paper justifies a process orientation to public-speaking instruction and offers practical exercises, games, and activities for teaching the major rhetorical aspects involved in the process of public…

Issues related to a national assessment of speaking and listening skills include the specification of the domain of communication competencies, the selection of measurement strategies, and the elimination of racial and ethnic bias. A project committee proposed that the domain of national assessment spans three dimensions: function (informing,…

Rhetoric is capable of producing preceptions which observed reality does not reveal to us. Because of rhetoric's reifying powers (that is, its ability to make abstractions concrete), it has been depended upon to make certain societal values come to life. In opposition to Jacques Ellul, an articulate exponent of the view that finds no existential…

Recently, communications scholars and theorists have begun formulating rules to describe the workings of language in various situations of everyday use. Theoretically, current rules approaches are in violation of the basic philosophy underlying communication theory--Whitehead's notion of process. The inconsistency is a function of the degree of…

A recurring puzzle in Aristotle's "Rhetoric" is the book's ethical stance; Aristotle gives practical advice on the use of persuasive discourse and intends it to be used in association with virtue, although the two seem to be separable. However, persuasion and virtue in Aristotle's theory of rhetoric have connections deriving from the…

Because children are exposed to highly professional sales pitches on television and because the old material produced by the Institute of Propaganda Analysis is outdated and in error, a new tool for the analysis of propaganda and persuasion is called for. Such a tool is the intensify/downplay pattern analysis chart, which includes the basic…

All of the television camera shots in the three Ford/Carter presidential debates were studied according to type, frequency, and duration to determine whether the images presented by the camera could have influenced the audience's perception of the candidates. According to the debate rules, each candidate was allowed three minutes to answer a…

This paper views communication as the major human survival tool. Any approach which limits or hampers the innate metabolic human ability to adapt, in order to maximize the chances for survival through communication, is thus seen as dangerous. Instead, a methodology is suggested to develop a communication sub-culture, to facilitate individual…

The two studies of predisposition toward verbal behavior (PVB) reported in this paper examined the behavior of interactants who have dissimilar verbal predispositions in task-oriented discussions. In the first study, 20 groups of three members each were given an interpersonal task that involved reaching a consensus. In the second study, 17 pairs…