In describing the "communiversity" program for adults and nontraditional students in the Fargo-Moorhead (Minnesota) area, this paper notes how the program developed from education programs of local churches to an expanded offering of adult continuing education in the liberal arts and sciences, personal and family life development, and…

A study examined the effects of gender on academic achievement in speech communication courses. In order to test the research hypothesis that females would receive higher grades than males, 2,190 grades given by 74 speech communication teachers over a five-year period were examined. The analysis of variance placed gender of the instructor, gender…

A study was conducted (1) to determine the effectiveness of a specially designed one-semester basic speech course on the self-image of college students experiencing extreme communication anxiety, and (2) to discover whether a difference existed between the self-image of students who had an external locus of control and those with an internal locus…

Problems related to the structure of the mental lexicon are considered. The single access assumption, the passive memory assumption, and the heterogeneous memory assumption are rejected in favor of the theory which assumes several active memories, each able to store expression based on only one homogenous set of abstract primitives. One lexicon…

Intended for use by administrators, teachers, and district and state personnel, this guide provides a framework for Hawaii's kindergarten through grade 12 language arts program. Various sections of the guide contain (1) a statement of beliefs concerning the nature of language, language and learning, the student, and the school climate; (2) program…

A study was conducted to examine speech interruption patterns as an index of communication dominance and gender differences in language behavior. Six graduate student groups involving a total of 35 subjects were videotaped. The data extracted for study were 255 transcribed interruption sequences. A category system was developed and used to code…

This study examined the conditions for the selection of certain communication strategies in terms of the inferencing ability of the learner, the formal proficiency level attained, and the features of the communicative situation (task requirements). Two groups of 17-year-olds--one studying advanced French and the other French as part of a "core"…

To determine what counts as success in a French first grade, an ethnographer investigated what happens when the teacher "applies" her categories of "things students do" to particular situations. The category called "searching" served as an example. To produce a body of data, the teacher commented on videotapes of…

The rationale, development, and structure of a high school oral communication assessment program are described in this paper. Following information on competency based education and the need for developing and testing students' oral communication skills, the development of an assessment instrument by the Glynn County (Georgia) school system is…

This bibliographic pathfinder to Northern Illinois University Library's holdings in the field of speech communication lists resources under the following divisions: basic guides; selected bibliographies; yearbooks, handbooks, and directories; government publications; scholarly journals; professional and trade journals; periodical directories;…

This issue of the Journal contains the following articles and features: (1) "Information for English Teachers"; (2) "The Group-Oral Test: An Experiment," by T. Reves; (3) "Finding a New Method for Testing Oral Proficiency," by L. Taharlev; (4) "The Experimental Oral Examination," by Y. Lapushin; (5) "One Vote for the Group Oral Test," by E.…

The design of a dynamic processing model for teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is discussed in this book. The model starts with the learner and ends with the learner's target communicative competence in the particular area needed. In this communicative approach to syllabus design, the first chapter is a discussion of theories of…

The second half of a pilot study on bilingual education (first half presented at the 1979 Rocky Mountain Educational Research Association conference) focused on whether bilingual education established classroom environments to promote a transition in language or the learning of and in two languages. Each of 43 observers trained in time estimation…

This report describes a classroom communication training program for foreign teaching assistants (FTAs) developed at the University of Minnesota in response to evidence that the FTAs were the subject of criticism and complaints because of poor communication abilities in their classes. The first two sections of the paper discuss the background to…

The communication habits of Americans have been studied by many researchers and the results of their studies support the general conclusions that the average adult spends a large portion of his or her waking hours in oral communication activities. Since communication plays such a large role in the average student's life, communicating effectively…