The issues of empiricism and theory-building can be used in practical terms to discuss how literary texts can be used to elucidate gender issues in the classroom. For instance, two literary texts written early in this century--Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" and Ernest Hemingway's short story "Up in Michigan"--can illustrate…

Responding to calls by Missouri's Coordinating Board of Higher Education and in turn by Northeast Missouri State University, the communication faculty appointed a committee on oral communication assessment. The committee submitted to the communication faculty an assessment proposal that focused on answering the question of whether the basic speech…

Students should become acquainted with gender communication differences in basic communication courses so that they can more effectively deal with each other. Very few business communication textbooks acknowledge that gender sensitivity is an important criterion. Also, instructors unintentionally ignore or trivialize the issue of gender…

The 4MAT system (an eight-step cycle of instruction that combines four learning style types and students' preferences for right-brain or left-brain modes of learning) can guide instructors in planning teaching strategies to meet students' diverse learning needs. Each of the eight steps of the system emphasizes one of the learning types and…

Oklahoma State University offered a special section of the basic speech communication course for students with public speaking anxiety. Students enrolled by permission of the instructor, and enrollment was limited to 30 students. The class rapidly filled to its 30-student limit, and a waiting list was maintained. The basic course is hybrid in…

A pilot study investigated whether the levels of public speaking anxiety were significant among the graduate teaching assistants in the speech communication program at a large midwestern university. The 12 subjects were attending a 3-day, 24-hour workshop in training before the beginning of the semester. All subjects were master's degree students…

Using film making in the classroom can bring to life concepts that may seem abstract and offer thinking as well as decision making skills to the participants. To achieve this objective, a small group communication class was asked to make a movie about creativity. The 3-week project resulted in the writing, directing, filming, and editing of a…

The goal of the Speaking Across the Curriculum movement is to increase oral communication competencies at the college and university level. Much of what has been implemented within Writing Across the Curriculum can be applied to Speaking Across the Curriculum. A study examined students' opinions of a proposed Speaking Center at Eastern Illinois…

In studying sociolinguistic rules, researchers must be aware of some guiding principles: that (1) these rules are below the conscious level of awareness, and (2) rules of speaking differ across cultural groups, with none being more correct than another. Even when members of different cultural groups interact in the same language they may find it…

Films such as Peter Weir's 1985 film "Witness" can be used in intercultural communication classrooms to increase intercultural understanding, provide a substitute for experience, and compare cultures. In "Witness," an Amish boy witnesses the murder of an undercover narcotics agent. The investigating detective, the boy, and his…

This paper describes a student internship program available to students majoring in public relations, radio-television, or organizational communication at Purdue University Calumet in Hammond, Indiana, through which an average of 10 students per semester (since 1986) have interned at a variety of broadcast and business institutions. The paper…

Noting that the adult learner is becoming an increasingly prevalent presence in the classroom, this paper presents a literature review and critical evaluation of the overall effort made by communication researchers to study the phenomenon of the adult learner in the college classroom. The paper first reviews 13 articles in 3 categories of research…

A study aimed to provide information about the current communication curriculum offered through undergraduate programs. A systematic search of the undergraduate catalogs of 565 institutions was conducted viewing Speech Communication Programs available in the Central States region. Results indicated that all but five institutions offered at least…

his booklet serves the following objectives; (1) it provides an overview of the role of communication in the United States economy and labor force; (2) it characterizes developments in the discipline of communication; (3) it identifies the relationships between employment areas and communication training; (4) it offers trends and projections in…

Empathic listening is a specific category of listening in which people actively engage in dialogue at the affective level, with the listener attempting to understand and acknowledge the present feelings being experienced by the speaker. Since empathic listening is central to human communication processes, any speech communication curriculum which…