Describes how the school intercom system was used to announce a new book of the day in persuasive terms during December, Reading Month, in Virginia. Includes sample booktalks. (CRH)

Public school students have completed this year's testing under the 2003-04 Wisconsin Student Assessment System "Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examinations" (WKCE). These examinations were administered at grades 4, 8, and 10 as required by s. 118.30, Wis. Stats. The test results will provide important information about what students know and…

We examine eight cases of argumentation in relation to a proportional reasoning task--the "Paint" task--in which the "constant sum" strategy was a significant factor. Our analysis of argument follows Toulmin's (1958) approach and in the discourse we trace factors which seem to facilitate changes in argument. We find that the arguments of "constant…

Noting that the process of making and supporting generalizations and argumentation are two thinking strategies that cut across almost every subject area, this paper presents several class activities designed to improve students' ability to make and support generalizations and produce arguments in a written (or oral) composition. The first activity…

Oral communication competence is essential for career success and for effective participation as a citizen in a democratic society. Unfortunately, many students do not have oral communication competence, and even more unfortunately the success of graduating students rests heavily on their communication skills. Oral communication competence,…

A meta-analysis considered the impact of various methods of improving public communication skills on critical thinking. Manuscripts were obtained by searching the available electronic databases (COMINDEX, Dissertation Abstracts, ERIC, Index to Communication Journals, PSYCHLIT), various bibliographies available on the topic, as well as the…

A study examined viewer recall of television commercial content as influenced by both commercial spot positioning within breaks and the congruence or dissonance of the affective (emotionally evocative) formats of the program contexts and commercials. Objectives were to determine whether commercials will have greater rates of viewer recall if: (1)…

Based on the proposition that if people want their electronic messages to get the results they desire, they will need to adopt and practice effective communication strategies, this book introduces strategies that make e-mail messages, Web site text, and newsgroup postings effective. To this end, it teaches how word choice can affect meaning, how…

This paper presents results from a contrastive study of qualification devices used in a 400,000-word corpus of English argumentative texts, written by English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) Spanish university students, U.S. university students, and native professional writers (newspaper editorials in English). The study attempted to account for the…

Aristotelian rhetorical theory and communication theory applied to analysis of film theory. (CH)

An Historical Analysis of black speeches which indicates the failure of rhetorical appeals to values to effectively persuade an audience. (DD)

Concludes that debate research and teaching must avoid the anti-intellectualism and non-logical approaches currently practiced. (CH)

Analyzes potential benefits of debaters observing the nonverbal behavior of debate judges in obtaining immediate indications of judges' reactions. (CH)