A recent employer survey sponsored by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills found that the skills new job entrants most need for success in the workplace--oral and written communication, time management, critical thinking, problem solving, personal accountability, and the ability to work effectively with others--are the areas in which recent…

In our summer 2006 issue, we ran a comprehensive overview of how postmodernism has degraded composition on our campuses. Steve Kogan enlarges that indictment and charges that the movement has deliberately corrupted every area of English instruction--from the acquisition of skills and knowledge to the more fundamental mission of developing in…

The new independent Christian schools developed by parents and evangelical churches in the United Kingdom since the late 1960s remain controversial among both Christian and secular educators. In response to this controversy, the present study traced 106 men who had graduated from these schools between 1985 and 2003 and analysed their evaluation of…

Success for All (SFA) is a comprehensive reading, writing, and oral language development program for students in pre-K through eighth grade. Its underlying premise is that all children, including those with limited English proficiency, can and should be reading in English at grade level by the end of third grade. (SFA can impact Spanish literacy…

Community colleges are a democratizing force in post-secondary education, different from but equal to universities. They offer an expedient route to the labour market. This suggests the need for colleges to focus on the development of their students' leadership ability and to implement strategies for evaluating the success of leadership…

Students who do not fit the definition of the traditional student are becoming an increasingly large segment of the college population. In order to effectively promote retention in today's college students, the student development professional must understand these changing demographic and academic characteristics. This study compared student…

Educators have come to recognize the importance of their efforts in building students' social and emotional skills. However, the creation of lasting programming often fails to keep pace with educators' best intentions. In this article, the authors suggest guidelines for ways in which school counselors can be involved in implementing sustained…

This paper explores discourse features of Australian Sign Language (Auslan) and the need for sign language interpreting students to acquire an understanding of, and skills in, a range of discourse genres in Auslan in order to effectively carry out the work required in their profession. Discourse features of spoken English are outlined and compared…

A 4-year longitudinal study in Tennessee, called the Student-Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR) Project, examined the effects of class size on student achievement in kindergarten through grade 3. More than 6,000 students from 75 schools in 42 school systems were included in the study. There were three class sizes: small class (13-17 students),…

If those teaching advertising courses with significant ethics components are concerned about having a genuine--as opposed to cosmetic--impact on how their students translate what is taught in the classroom to the "real world," they must focus on the idea of "oughtness." The question is: what can instructors in advertising…

The conceptualization of the Mars Hill College (MHC) communication major is a type of the refocused, liberal arts-based programs appearing at many colleges and universities around the country--Mars Hill is an undergraduate college of 1100 students. The final product (the liberal-arts based, interdisciplinary MHC communication major) is the result…

A study on basic speech assessment replicated an earlier one except that in place of the CCAI and the Competent Speaker form, the Self-Perceived Public Speaking Competency Scale (SPPSC) was used. Also, 2 randomly selected control groups of students were added to the research design: one consisting of 62 students who had not taken speech and were…

This longitudinal study examined the question of change and stability in students' used learning strategies during the first 2 years of study at the university. A total of 188 students from Tilburg University in the Netherlands took part in the study, including 90 in law, 27 in art, 48 in economics, and 23 in the social sciences. The students…

A study examined what critiques, if any, encourage debaters to think about their debating in the most productive ways. It evaluated oral critiques and revealed decisions as components in influencing the debaters'"self-talk" or internal dialogues as the more important messages. The study used R. Petty and J. Cacioppo's (1986) elaboration…

An internship and a Junior Communication Seminar help prepare students for gainful employment at Shorter College in Rome, Georgia. The second-semester seminar focuses on job-hunting strategies to help students in the search for the required internship and for future employment. A significant portion of the course is devoted to students' dialogue…