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Why Communication is Important: A Rationale for the Centrality of the Study of Communication
Abstract
A CADEMIC disciplines in higher education are routinely called upon to explain and justify their role in the educational enterprise. Some academic fields such as history and philosophy are more central in the pursuits of liberal arts, while oth-ers such as business administration and engineering are more related to career develop-ment. The discipline of communication is fairly unique as it crosses these boundaries. As a result, a need exists to provide a rationale for the study of communication. The National Communication Association, in response to requests from communication departments and administrators for evidence supporting the centrality of their discipline, has collected and annotated nearly 100 articles, commentaries, and publications which call attention to the importance of the study of communication in contemporary society. Four of five ma-jor themes in the bibliography provide support for the importance of communication edu-cation to: the development of the whole person; the improvement of the educational enter-prise; being a responsible citizen ofthe world, both socially and culturally; and, succeed-ing in one's career and in the business enterprise. A fifth theme highlights the need for communication education to be provided by those who are specialists in its study.
... In research of numerous sources, Morreale et al. (2000) gave evidence of the importance of communication education. As Morreale and Pearson (2008) later asserted, communication instruction is a "pressing need" at all levels of the educational system in the USA. ...
The basic finding uniting the researchers is that motivation is the weakest educational component, which prompted us to create and suggest a practical model of motivational competence. The project is based on the researchers’ descriptions of students’ motivational leading variables. Our main finding is lack of a value system and moral virtues in the foundation of motivation. The constructive components of the model cognition , cogitation, and skills were built on that basis. The main functional approaches in the study with the model are communication, feedback, and critical thinking . The model aims: (1) to direct teachers in creating and maintaining students’ motivation through motivational competence based on human values and virtues and (2) to strongly recommend that educational policies must pinpoint a value system and moral criteria for schools and universities so that educators can rigorously develop them in students through motivation. The contributions of the model are: (1) it is based on the crucial need for a strong value system and moral virtues in the foundation of students’ motivation and behavior; (2) it is bidirectional—developing students’ motivational competence, in parallel it increases teachers’ motivational competencies; (3) it argues that motivational competence must be the professional imperative leading to the curriculum purposes of teaching–learning process on the foundation of competence, high spiritual qualities, and morality.
... The educational process will be successful if the message the teacher is sending is specific, clear, simple, and meaningful. A teacher's classroom communication skills play a crucial role in this regard, as a teacher with good communication skills makes it clear to a student what is right and what is wrong (Sherwyn p. Morreale et al., 2000). Seghedin, E. (2012) is of the view that communication -the most important of all professional competencies-is essential for a teacher. ...
This study was carried out to find out the impact of teachers' communication skills on the academic achievement of students at the secondary school level. The nature of the study was descriptive, and a Quantitative research design was adopted to investigate the problem. The target population of the study was all the Secondary School Teachers and students of class 10th in Government (boys) Schools in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), and the accessible population was all the 1315 SSTs and all the 18453 students of class 10th in the Government (boys) Schools in two districts of KP- Mardan and Nowshera. A self-developed closed-end questionnaire was used as an instrument for the collection of data from the respondents, teachers, and students. The average Reliability of the questionnaire was 0.98. The reliability coefficient confirmed that the instrument was highly reliable. The sample size (200 teachers and 400 students) was determined with the help of an online calculator. A simple random sampling technique was used for the selection of respondents from the accessible population. The data was quantified and tested using a regression test. Results of the regression test showed a positive but insignificant impact of teachers' communication skills on the academic achievement of students at the secondary school level. The findings of the study were that teachers use speaking and writing skills better than listening and body language skills, and the impact of teachers' communication skills on the academic achievement of students was positive but low and insignificant.
... Quality of reading and writing skills minimize the academic stress of engineering students as well as improve their personalities to fulfill their goals [4]. From the perspective of the analytical framework, it is realized that better communication skills are a requirement of engineering students to mentally prepare themselves for the challenging environment of the academic world [5]. Dire necessity is also associated with the lack of communication skills in the English language among engineering students in higher education [6]. ...
Engineering students lead complicated problem-solving and creative design in this age of fast technology and innovation. To succeed, engineering students must grasp the skills of reading and writing, which is often neglected. The paper investigates how the instruction plan improves the Reading and Writing skills of first-year B.Tech students. The study used a comparative approach to examine students' performance in pre-test and post-test for Reading Comprehension, Paragraph, and Essay writing utilizing a different instruction plan than the prior one. The results of 180 B. Tech 1st year students from universities which are offering B. Tech courses in Hyderabad, Telangana. Structured tests in reading comprehension, paragraph writing, and essay writing are used to collect data. To determine the influence of demographic factors on abilities, statistical techniques such as t-tests are used. According to the findings, the instruction method makes a substantial impact in the scores of the B.Tech first-year students in Reading Comprehension, Paragraph Writing, and Essay Writing, regardless of their gender, residence, or education medium. This study adds to the increasing debate over the critical importance of reading and writing ability in engineering education. The findings give empirical evidence in support of including specialist reading and writing programs within the engineering curriculum.
... Public perception that adults who stutter are poor communicators is pervasive. Decades of research illustrate the widespread belief that competent communication-a skill that is considered essential for academic success (e.g., [1]), workplace advancement (e.g., [2][3][4][5]), and interpersonal relationships (see [6,7])-cannot be adequately attained in the presence of stuttered speech. Based on this assumption, treatment options for adults who stutter have historically focused, in part or whole, on learning to speak fluently, and/or modifying moments of stuttered speech (see systematic review by Brignell et al. [8] that indicate post-treatment fluency gains are achievable for some adults (e.g., [9][10][11]), these reviews also note considerable individual variability. ...
Previous studies have reported that adults who stutter demonstrate significant gains in communication competence, per self-ratings and clinician-ratings, upon completion of a communication-centered treatment, or CCT. The purpose of this social validation study was to determine whether communication competence ratings reported by untrained observers are consistent with client and clinician judgments of communication competence gains following CCT. Eighty-one untrained observers completed an online survey that required each to view one of two videos depicting an adult who stutters during a mock interview recorded prior to CCT or after CCT. Observers were then asked to rate the communication competence of the interviewee on a 100-point visual analog scale and provide additional demographic information. Communication competence of the adult who stutters who had completed CCT was rated significantly higher in their post-treatment video. Upon controlling for two demographic factors found to be associated with observer ratings (years of education, years the observers had known an adult who stutters), significantly higher ratings of communication competence for the post-treatment video were maintained. These preliminary findings provide social validity for CCT by demonstrating that the gains in communication competence reported in previous studies through clinician and client observations are also reported by untrained observers who are not familiar with CCT.
... 27). Very much like communication theories, employability theories propounded by researchers, mostly agree that the major constituent of employability is contingent on competent communication, knowledge, attitudes, skills and personal attributes (Hillage & Pollard, 1998;Morreale, Osborn, & Pearson, 2000;Pool & Sewell, 2007;Yorke & Knight, 2004). Peterson (1997) study on personnel interviewers in the U.S showed that employers demand communication competence as an essential qualification for applicants' success in job interviews (Dearing, 1997;Lawrence, 2002). ...
this paper is about Communication Competence of Mass Communication Undergraduates in Lagos, Nigeria.
... Students may not be able to learn and perform academically if the teacher has poor communication skills. Student need to understand that what is right, and what is wrong while it totally depends upon the communication skills of teachers which he adopts in class-room (Sherwyn et al., 2000). It reduces the likelihood of unkind feelings during the teaching process. ...
Training is very important in any organization that aims at progressing. It plays important roles in the effectiveness of an organization and its workforce. In the Division of Province of Cavite, the result of National Achievement Test for the past three years has not reached yet the target mean percentage score of 75. It is in this regard that the researcher intended to ascertain the training needs of public junior high school teachers in the Division of Province of Cavite. The study made use of descriptive research design. The researcher utilized convenient sampling technique in selecting the 100 participants of the study. This study was conducted using the survey tool adapted from Department of Education Region X, Division of Cagayan De Oro City. The results revealed that the most needed trainings of public Junior High School teachers are on knowledge management, moral transformation, conducting qualitative research, oral communication, enhancing analytical and critical thinking, spread sheets/ data base, and spirituality. The results provide an input for a proposed capability enhancement program for teachers.
... This is unfortunate, given that, according to Ford and Wolvin (1993), once public speaking is trained in the classroom, students perceive that their communication becomes more effective and they feel more self-confident, more confident that they are well-regarded by others, more able to reason with other people and more skillful at using language appropriately. The ability to communicate effectively and appropriately is learned and, therefore, must be taught (Morreale et al., 2000). In short, teaching public speaking skills needs to be directly integrated into the classroom. ...
This study explored the relationship between communication skills and career advancement for construction managers. The synthesis of grounded practices to communication theory was inclusive of a literature review, and related studies combined with observations and interviews in the field were used to develop a career trajectory model. This model is presented with quantitative and qualitative measures to validate the theory provided. Results from field observations, interviews, and validation measures are discussed and summarized. The study concludes that construction managers may accelerate their careers through conscientious efforts to develop their personal communication skills.
The innate ability to perform effectively during an oral presentation is an important skill to evaluate when testing the personality traits of engineering undergraduate students. The importance of oral presentation when assessing the personality of a candidate has been realized. The intention of this study is to investigate the significance of personality in students' oral presentation performance. Questionnaires based on the big five dimensions of personality traits were formulated, and it was responded to by 215 non-English engineering students. Furthermore, these five dimensions are represented with ten different archetypes. The probable combinations of these 10 archetypes resulted in 32 personality types. On the other hand, the presentation skills and other associated parameters of all 215 respondents were assessed by 24 jurors spread over 12 tracks. From the result, the specific personality type achieving best competencies in technical presentation has been identified. Additionally, the training model for disparate personalities has also been framed.
This directory details the requirements for and supply of basic skills in the work force of England and Wales as determined in a survey of 73 Training and Enterprise Councils that covered approximately 1.3 million jobs below the professional and technical level in 24,000 establishments. The first chapter describes the survey and the structure of the directory. Chapter 2 covers the overall level of demand for literacy and numeracy skills and examines how skill requirements vary form job to job. Data are summarized by 49 occupations. Examined in chapter 3 are the trends in the demand for basic skills and the importance of various job-related, workplace-related, and communication factors in influencing overall patterns of basic skill demands. Chapter 4 considered recent changes in employers' demands for basic skills in the workplace. In chapter 5, the adequacy of the current basic skills supply is reviewed from the standpoints of (1) employers' perceptions of their own employees' reading, writing, numeracy, and oral communications skills; and (2) their perceptions of labor supply in the labor market as a whole. A description of the research methods used is appended along with technical information on the survey. The report includes 23 figures and 37 tables. (MN)