To shed light on why President Ronald Reagan chose radio as his favorite medium, a study examined President Reagan's radio addresses in the first year of his second term, 1985, and compared them with his first term speeches of August 1982 to August 1983. The study also compared President Franklin D. Roosevelt's fireside chats with Reagan's radio…

Basic Speech Communication courses which emphasize public speaking are an opportunity to teach critical thinking skills in the form of critical listening. Students can be taught to analyze the evidence or ideas of others and make critical judgments about the validity or quality of materials presented, using a series of steps involving student and…

An advanced public speaking class at the Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, was specifically designed not only to improve the overall quality of a speech communication program but also to increase the number of majors that an excellent program would attract. Only students who have demonstrated superior speaking skills in basic public speaking…

Communication is essential to the establishment and maintenance of a democracy. Democratic society is distinctive in that civic talk plays a determining role. A long tradition of civic talk exists in western democratic civilization. The Greek teacher, Protagoras, the Father of Debate, required his students to speak first on one side of an issue or…

A study examined the acceptance and effectiveness of a basic public speaking course that uses a modified Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) approach. Based on behavioristic psychology, PSI stresses mastery learning, self-pacing, the written word, student proctors, and lectures that motivate rather than just supply essential information. Five…

A moot court program developed for undergraduate debaters at Ball State University (Indiana) is presented. Following a brief introduction that establishes the benefits of such a program for the students and the department of communication, the first section of the paper explains how the moot court concept was modified to emphasize communication…

A study investigated listening and oral communication apprehension in high school and college students from the United States and Australia. The subjects were 355 students from the United States (133 high school females, 109 high school males, 65 college females, and 46 college males), and 339 students from Australia (73 high school females, 91…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 12 titles deal with the following topics: (1) John F. Kennedy's rhetoric during the 1960 West Virginia presidential primary; (2) male and female modes of rhetoric; (3) charismatic communication and faith healers; (4) the ideology…

The key question underlying this study was: What does the untrained population know about public speaking? The study thus focused on resolving the conflict between folk speech theory, or knowledge that students gain informally, and formal academic speech theory. An Inventory of Public Speaking Principles was devised to test six hypotheses which…

To identify speech skills necessary to effectively teach the oral dimension of language, 137 secondary school teachers of English in Alabama were asked to complete a questionnaire on (1) their undergraduate education, (2) their knowledge of speech, and (3) those speech activities perceived useful in facilitating instruction in oral English. The…

In intercollegiate debate, negative debaters must be prepared with a variety of approaches to differing affirmative cases and must adapt to particular affirmative cases they meet. Successful negative debaters cannot determine their strategy until the presentation of the first affirmative speech or, in cross-examination debates, until after…

This handbook contains basic resource material for debating significant changes in the United States jury system. Chapter 1 outlines available sources of information for preliminary research. Chapters 2 and 3 present background information on the federal and state court systems and the jury system. Chapter 4 discusses an interpretation of the…

Frequently speakers confront hostile groups and audiences with opposite points of view. Public communicators faced with this dilemma can choose not to address the group or, in speaking, can avoid points of contention, but a third more subtle alternative used is deliberate ambiguity or vagueness, a rhetorical strategy known as equivocation. But do…

Background information on the underlying issues of the 1973-74 National High School Debate Resolutions, which were designed to explore the necessity for and the feasibility of developing new federal programs to curb poverty, is contained in this handbook. Part 1 examines the problem of poverty in the United States--definitions, dimensions, causes,…

A course designed to aid the student in developing effective skills for critical listening and listening for comprehension of ideas. Clear articulation, effective voice production, acceptable pronunciation, pitch variation, rhythm and phrasing are also practiced for cultural growth and social maturity. The course outline consists of: I.…