Many speech communication educators and researchers look upon Dale Carnegie's public speaking course with derision for its methods as well as its motives. A comparison of Carnegie's course with university courses in speech communication reveals a number of differences between the two, which in part explains this attitude. Carnegie began his course…

Designed to give directors and teachers of the basic communication course new ideas, increased enthusiasm, and an easier work load, this course segment is in three major parts. Part 1 discusses course administration, including direction, design, and administration. Chapters in part one are: (1) Economics of the College Basic Communication Course;…

Recognizing that too often, African American students in communication courses are confronted with communication principles which to them seem inappropriate, unrealistic, and simply false, this paper analyzes the conceptual foundation of the public speaking course and suggests how it might be made more relevant for African American students. The…

A study compared Penn State University's computer-aided Reticence Program, for shy/reticent public speaking students, with two existing approaches: (1) oral interpretation and (2) the lectures, demonstrations, and coached rehearsals of more traditional reticence instruction. Thirty reticent students, including 9 males and 21 females, were placed…

This student workbook contains two instructional units, the first dealing with using the telephone and the second dealing with conducting a meeting and making a speech. Addressed in the unit on telephone usage are using the telephone directory, placing a call, answering the telephone, and taking messages. The unit on conducting a meeting and…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 15 titles deal with the following topics: (1) the role of public discourse in the soil conservation movement from 1865 to 1935; (2) Dwight D. Eisenhower's public imagery of the Soviet Union and Communist China as presented in…

There are two philosophies concerning how teachers might best facilitate their students' acquisition of communication competence. The first, a skills-oriented philosophy, adopts a building-block approach to the acquisition of communication competence. Organizationally, a public speaking course might start with a unit on analyzing audience and…

Many theoreticians have indicated that a major task of the nonpresumptive rhetor is to gain presumption, thereby shifting the burden of proof to the opposition. Rhetorically, Martin Luther King, Jr., sought to effect this shift in the burden of proof through the use of hierarchies of values. At the top of his value system was the love of God. The…

The 32 sources in this annotated bibliography are compiled for those interested in the available resources concerning theory and practice in public speaking. The bibliography cites only books with comprehensive treatments of the art of public speaking and its background, the majority of the items being textbooks that have gone through at least one…

The use of student lectures as an integrative language learning approach for university level English as second language students is described. Student lectures pair decoding skills with encoding skills through five steps: selecting an article of interest, reading the article and taking notes on it, using the notes to prepare an oral report,…

A study was conducted to investigate the success of women contestants in Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) debate. The study sought to determine whether (1) CEDA is a more attractive debate activity for women, (2) men are more successful in CEDA debate than women, (3) the gender mix of debate teams favors all-male teams over all-female…

Presidential use of television has significantly increased over the last 20 years, with most requests for air time being accepted. This has put out-of-power political parties at a disadvantage when attempting to gain support for their platform. Although Section 315 of the Communications Act of 1934 provides for some response time to uninterrupted…

Noting that while the literature clearly states a need for colleges and universities to teach students critical thinking skills from a liberal arts perspective, this paper points out that there are few descriptions of how these skills can be taught. Using the canons of classic rhetoric, the literature is reviewed to discover the skills that arise…

The rhetorical appropriateness of two of Shirley Chisholm's persuasive speeches on women's liberation were assessed using Afrocentric criteria for speech criticism developed by Molefi K. Asante (1979). The speeches addressed the controversy of whether the women's liberation movement was appropriate for women of minority cultures in the United…

A competency based learning approach as applied to public address instructional development can help to achieve the following goals: (1) to enable students to grasp the history of the period under study, (2) to enable students to develop and apply rhetorical criticism skills, (3) to provide students with a course format of high interest value, (4)…