Classrooms exist in an insular environment, and the work done there often feels disconnected from students' lives, interests, and hobbies. However, students today must cultivate the ability to navigate an increasingly connected global society. Global-ready graduates must be able to tackle real-world challenges, publish their work online, and…

This discourse analysis study examines the final moments of selected online sermons delivered by America's leading evangelical pastors and speakers, paying particular attention to the language employed in the presentation of Christian gospel tenets, the public invitation for salvation, the altar call that identifies new followers, and the…

Despite all the speaking that students do in class, they don't speak all that well. We sit through mediocre book reports and think, "Oh well, that's just how kids speak." We post a video to YouTube with students speaking poorly and kid ourselves by saying, "Hey, that's authentic speech!" Daily, we accept oral…

The purpose of this study is to shed light on the ways in which experts in foreign affairs project their scholarly identities on panel presentations. While previous research has focused on the ways in which researchers in various disciplines assert their scholarly identities in written discourse and in conference presentations, no study has…

The purpose of this study was to test whether increasing the relevancy of course assignments in a large multisection introductory public-speaking course would lead to improvements in student perceptions of course outcomes. Survey responses from 1,878 students were analyzed to test whether differences exist between students enrolled in classes held…

Year-one chemistry students at two different institutions were asked to rate the importance of a series of discipline-specific, transferable and laboratory skills by responding to a series of Likert-type questions. The students at both institutions had studied similar curricula but had different levels of experience of the Context and Problem…

This 2019 annotated bibliography reviews seven postsecondary peer cooperative learning programs that have been implemented nationally and internationally to increase student achievement. An extensive literature search was conducted of published journal articles, newspaper accounts, book chapters, books, ERIC documents, thesis and dissertations,…

Decades of research in psychology, education, and communication stand behind the claim that chunking information and providing connections among those chunks helps students learn (Bodiea, Powers, & Fitch-Hauser, 2006; Cowan, Chen, & Rouder, 2004; Gabriel & Mayzner, 1963; Miller, 1956). Informative speakers, who aim to help audiences…

This article analyses the use of peer and self-assessment in oral presentations as complementary tools to assessment by the professor. The analysis is based on a study conducted at the University of Girona (Spain) in seven different degree subjects and fields of knowledge. We designed and implemented two instruments to measure students' peer and…

Courses: Public Speaking. Objectives: This semester-long service-learning activity examines access to affordable healthy food as a social justice issue, using critical ethnography as a framework to help students understand the link between activism and public speaking skills. After completing the project, students will be able to: (1) develop a…

By exploring the uses of plain, middle, and grand styles, the author examines how theories of classical rhetoricians can be applied to Atticus Finch's speeches in "To Kill a Mockingbird." In the high school English classrooms the author has encountered, "rhetoric" has not been a focus or even a passing discussion. It forms the…

The need to develop oral presentation skills with reference to students' specialized professional contexts has been well-recognised. Attempts have also been made to develop collaboration between engineering faculty and language teaching professionals. In this paper, we describe an experiment where students were given an opportunity to demonstrate…

A fundamental challenge that all public speakers face is getting and keeping the attention of audiences. Because audiences absorb large amounts of talk with little chance of taking the floor, the potential for inattentiveness and boredom is significant. In conversational interchanges, the brief duration of speaking turns and regular transfers of…

Video continues to be used in many basic communication courses as a way for students to self-evaluate speechmaking. In this study, students (N = 71) presented speeches, viewed the video recordings, and produced self-generated feedback. Comparing student's self-estimated grades from the self-evaluation against earned grades resulted in composite…

People express part of their identity through their style, gestures, speech patterns, and language use. Other people read these displays as presentations of ourself, an insight into who we are. It is important, therefore, for students to recognize their own performance of identity and be able to express that identity in a clear way. By focusing on…