Recent restrictions in funds made available to higher education, reinforced by declining birth rates and slowing or falling enrollments, are forcing an adjustment of thinking by educators. The growth of the last 20 years was not the normal state of higher education. Educators have come to think that bigger is better as enrollments and faculty have…

When Democratic Senator William Proxmire attacked the Bicentennial Youth Debates, jointly sponsored by the Speech Communication Association (SCA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), for fiscal wastefulness, SCA president Lloyd Bitzer offered a public rebuttal to the charge. The three major standards of ethicality and…

Designed to answer some of the questions concerning the nature of professional ethics in the fields of anthropology, psychology, and sociology, this report outlines the range of ethical concerns of these three disciplines and describes the way in which these concerns have been previously presented. The first of the three sections of the report…

After discussing the rhetorical nature of physician/patient interactions, this paper describes and analyzes six medical interviews to illustrate the evolution of interpersonal and role relationships between physicians and patients, the sorts of information that are shared, and the way problems are resolved. The interviews that are described…

A content analysis was conducted to assess the verbal climate of Saturday morning television programs, the types of verbal aggression that appear in them, and the way verbal responses relate to other program variables. Three content analysis tools were developed and applied to ten half-hour program blocks drawn randomly from the regularly…

This booklet, part of a series of information resources for teachers, focuses on integrating speech communication activities into writing programs for older students. The activities described have been tested in the integrated skills program at the University of Massachusetts and include concrete plans, assignments, learning activities, and…

The psychological and social adjustment patterns of 809 Indochinese refugee heads of household in Illinois were examined by collecting data on their intrapersonal and interpersonal communication patterns. Four of five propositions derived from an interactive communication theory of the acculturation process were supported. The Indochinese…

Predominant in a list of the problems and predictions for education in general and speech communication education in particular for tbe next 50 years are both the changing form and function of the educator. A scenario of education in 2030 includes a nationwide teacher agreement that results in the release of students from mandatory attendance at…

Empirical studies that demonstrate probable gender biased perceptions resulting from the use of man-linked words and third-person, singular masculine pronouns are reviewed in this paper. Among the findings revealed by the review are: (1) there is a tendency for people to perceive man-linked words as more likely to refer to men than to women; (2)…

A study of formal communication in 30 families each with a schizophrenic son and 28 families, each with a "normal" son was conducted in Germany. By means of factor analysis four types of formal speech behavior were identified using musical terminology: "staccato," a highly fragmented flow of conversation with high turnover rate; "solo" in which…

A computer-assisted analysis of studies on referential communication (giving directions/explanations) located 66 reports involving 80 experiments, 114 referential tasks, and over 6,200 individuals. The studies were entered into a statistical software package system (SPSS) and analyzed for characteristics of the subjects and experimental designs,…

By adopting methods for teaching oral communication skills in conjunction with writing, instructors can help students become more competent technical communicators. Dyadic skills in interpersonal communication and small group discussion are the highest priority of the technical writing curriculum and can be taught through a team writing project.…

A study of data on Japanese children shows that the development of verbs occurs at the same time as the development of nouns and may even precede it. The subjects for the study were two children who were learning Japanese as their first language. Four speech samples, taken between the ages of 22 and 28 months, were audiotaped and supplemented by…

THIS STUDY WAS INITIATED TO ANALYZE AND COMPARE THE CONTENT OF GOALS OF FIFTH- AND SIXTH-GRADE LANGUAGE ARTS PROGRAMS WITH THE LANGUAGE ARTS AREAS ASSESSED BY STANDARDIZED ACHIEVEMENT TESTS. BY USING A FRAMEWORK OF COMMUNICATION SKILLS RECOMMENDED BY SEVERAL AUTHORITIES IN THE LANGUAGE ARTS, SEVEN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHERS CLASSIFIED AND JUDGED…

THE FOUR LANGUAGE LESSONS INCLUDED IN THIS REPORT USE SIMPLE SCIENCE CONCEPTS AND AN ORAL-AURAL APPROACH TO DEVELOP LINGUISTIC BUILDUPS IN ENGLISH FOR DISADVANTAGED SPANISH-SPEAKING CHILDREN. THE LESSONS WERE DESIGNED TO DEVELOP FLUENCY IN ENGLISH FOR SELF-IDENTIFICATION AND DAILY COMMUNICATION OF BASIC NEEDS. SHORT, SIMPLE SENTENCES IN THE…