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Оглавление1 Why Include Oral Communication in Your Course?
What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.
—Frank R. Pierson
Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.
Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere.
The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them.
—Stephen King
Be sincere; be brief; be seated.
—Franklin Delano Roosevelt
From American presidents to CEOs, inventors to aviators, and authors to film directors—the importance of communication can be seen in cliché after cliché, heard in motivational speech upon motivational speech, and read in one inspirational book after another. Its importance is not debatable; its presence in our lives, a given. Yet, doing it well requires conscientiousness and effort. Doing it poorly can have devastating consequences. And as with many things, teaching it well is a completely different beast than actually mastering it yourself. Furthermore, teaching it well when it is not your primary area of study, course content, or research may seem like a challenging task. This book is meant to help you in this endeavor— to teach communication within your discipline in a way that serves your own instructional goals. By incorporating communication in your courses, you have the potential to help your students learn what it means to interact as a member of your discipline, to prepare your students for future success in the workplace, to engage your students in the course material in more thoughtful ways, and to encourage civic participation and responsibility. Helping students learn to communicate well is helping them learn to be confident, thoughtful, and proactive agents of change. Helping students use communication to learn course material is helping them learn to be independent, invested critical learners. Helping you learn to help your students communicate is what this book is about.
Why Oral Communication? Why Now?
The quotations at the beginning of this book illustrate the widespread recognition of the importance of communication. There is evidence, as well, in a number of different arenas (beyond popular quotations) to support the centrality of communication. In the business world, for example, what is clear is that businesses and industries are consistently recognizing communication competence as critical and necessary for college graduates. Key points include
•The National Associations of Colleges and Employees’(NACE) 2015 Job Outlook Report describes results of a survey of employers on the qualities that make up an ideal candidate for a job. Communication skills (the ability of students to write and speak clearly) ranked high, with nearly 80 percent of respondents identifying team work skills, 73.4 percent identifying written communication skills, and 67 percent identifying verbal communication skills as attributes sought on a candidate’s resume (National Association of Colleges and Employers, 2014).
•CollegeGrad.com conducts a survey on employers’ desired qualities for new college graduates every two years. In the past two surveys, the second identified “most important” quality was a student’s interviewing skills—ranking above GPA, internship experience, and computer skills (retrieved from http://www.collegegrad.com/press/whatemployerswant.shtml).
•Silicon Valley employers surveyed reported wanting new employees to have better communication skills—including the ability to use vocabulary appropriately and the ability to professionally use language (Stevens, 2005).
•In two qualitative studies completed by the Microsoft Corporation on struggles new employees faced with socialization in the Microsoft workplace, new employees identified communication as a key struggle—articulating the need to learn to work in large teams and to learn how to ask good questions of colleagues and managers (Begel & Simon, 2008).
•Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, on behalf of the California Foundation for Commerce and Education and funded by the Gates and Hewlett Foundations, conducted a survey and focus groups among California business leaders to get their opinions on public education. One emerging theme was a desire for graduates to have skills such as communication, personal responsibility, and a better work ethic—skills well suited for the workplace. In fact, 55 percent of the respondents rated “communication skills” as the highest priority for educational focus (Tulchin & Muehlenkamp, 2007).
•Robert Half Technology commissioned a recent poll that illustrated that chief information officers believe the skills necessary for new employees have changed in the past five years—with more of an emphasis on project management, oral communication, writing, and getting along with others—in addition to the traditionally high-rated technical skills (Tucci, 2007, May 16).
As illustrated above, the importance of developing communication skills for the professional arena is undisputed.
Additionally, there is increasing evidence that communication skills are critical for citizen engagement as well. Susan Bickford, in her book Listening, Conflict, and Citizenship: The Dissonance of Democracy, suggests that democracy, by definition, necessitates communication: “It is precisely the presence of conflict and differences that makes communicative interaction necessary. This communicative interaction—speaking and listening together—does not do away with the conflicts that arise from uncertainty, inequality and identity. Rather, it enables political actors to decide democratically how to act in the face of conflict.” (Bickford, 1996, p. 2). Likewise, in his book The Magic of Dialogue: Transforming Conflict into Collaboration, Daniel Yankelovich (1999) suggests there are three key skills necessary for authentic citizen engagement: empathic listening, treating others as equal partners in dialogue, and examining unearthed assumptions without judgment. Such works point to the necessity of communication competencies in civic settings, and hence, the importance of teaching those competencies in classrooms where they are relevant.
Not only is it clear that communication is important, but in the past decade, there has been quite a bit of press suggesting that it is a skill that is lacking. Popular press articles lament students’ inability to speak clearly as proficient members of society. Take for example, the following:
•In a newspaper article in The Boston Globe (Zernike, 1999) titled “Talk is, Like, You know, Cheapened,” the issue of “mallspeak” (like, you know, goes . . .) is brought up as a critical problem for American democracy and education.
•The problem of inarticulateness was serious enough to be addressed in the legislative session—one senator even mockingly imagined whether Abraham Lincoln could have rallied the nation’s determination if the Gettysburg address began, ‘Four score, and like, seven years ago, you know, our forefathers, uh, brought forth, you know . . . .’”
•In the poem, “Totally Like Whatever,” Taylor Mali asks, “Have we just gotten to the point that we’re the most aggressively inarticulate generation to come along since, you know…a long time ago?” He encourages this generation, in the poem, to “speak with conviction and authority.” (http://www.taylormali.com/poems-online/totally-like-whatever-you-know/).
•The LA Times article “College, Like, Focus on Speech” (Mehren, 1999) describes the proliferation of the youth “mall-speak” or “teenbonics,” reflecting students’ inability to craft arguments, make clear points, and to deal with crucial issues without fighting over them or avoiding them. This article also describes oral communication as an important competency for all students to have: “The premise is that writing skills and a degree from a prestigious institution are no longer enough. In order to face the world beyond college, students must speak effectively, be able to organize cogent arguments and be ready to function in an increasingly team-oriented workplace. It’s verbal competence-cum-confidence: understanding that mall-speak is fine when you’re with your buddies, but beginning a meeting with ‘I was, like, y’know, whatever’ just won’t cut it.”
•The Chronicle of Higher Education article “Taking Aim at Student Incoherence” describes the problem of inarticulateness as a serious and substantive one—moving beyond the delivery issue of “mall-speak”—reflecting problems with students’ thinking. The article illustrates how attention to communication can address not only the issue of inarticulate and vernacular speech, but also students’ competencies in organization, critical thinking, argumentation, and learning of course material (retrieved from http://chronicle.com/colloquy/99/speech/background.htm).
Clearly, the development of articulate communication is a critical concern. Integrating oral communication activities in the classroom can help alleviate this concern. Additionally, integrating oral communication activities into the classroom can also be beneficial to students’ learning. In higher education, there are a number of different initiatives that have recognized the importance of student oral participation to the learning endeavor. The rise of active learning as a viable, necessary, and important alternative to lecturing has been documented widely (e.g., Barnes, 1980; Helman & Horswill, 2002; Johnson & Johnson, 1974; Silvan, Wong Leung, Woon, & Kember, 2000; Slaven, 1995; Springer, Stanne, Donovan, 1999; Yoder & Hochevar, 2005). In fact, in many disciplines, there is clear research that active learning improves students’ performances on exams and other performance-based measures. In addition to increased content performance, active learning research has shown other benefits in terms of development of critical thinking skills, independent learning abilities, motivation for lifelong learning, and problem-solving skills. Other educational endeavors (e.g., cooperative learning, inquiry-guided instruction, service learning, etc.) have supported and built upon this basic premise—that getting students involved as active participants in the classroom (as opposed to passive recipients of content delivered through a lecture) is productive, valuable, and beneficial.
Research on the “writing to learn” initiative has also documented that the active writing process enhances learning of course content (e.g., Herrington, 1981; Odell, 1980). Scholars in composition have studied this relationship between writing and learning for several decades, and such a history is well documented (Bazerman, Little, Bethel, Chavkin, Fouquette, Garufis, 2005). In articulating the unique characteristics of written communication that make it a valuable mode of learning, Janet Emig (1977) argued that “verbal language represents the most available medium for composing; in fact, the significance of sheer availability in its selection as a mode for learning can probably not be overstressed” (p. 122). Although Emig argued that writing, by its nature, was more useful than talking for the development of learning, research on the effects of oral communication—or the verbalization of material—on learning has shown, among other things, the following:
•Vocalized stimuli are recalled more often than non-vocalized stimuli (Carmean & Weir, 1967; De Vesta & Rickards, 1971; Weir & Helgoe, 1968).
•Adults are more likely to locate errors in the course of a computation if they verbalize the ways the errors could have occurred (Marks, 1951).
•Vocalization during problem solving tasks produces better performance than not vocalizing (Davis, 1968; Gagne & Smith, 1962).
•Students who studied verbal material in order to teach it to another student learned more than students instructed only to learn it (Bargh & Schul, 1980)
•Students who give and receive explanations learn more than those who don’t (Webb, 1982; Webb, 2009).
•Learning is increased when students are engaged in oral interaction with those who have a greater degree of knowledge and also communicate within the zone of knowledge held by the learner (Hatano, 1993; O’Donnell, 2006; Vygotsky, 1978).
•Students who ask questions but are not answered suffer; in fact, this occurrence is a strong predictor of poor performance (Webb, 1982, 2009). This result suggests a relational dimension to the oral communication experience within the learning context: Students who ask, but do not receive a response, may be prone to quit asking.
•Students restructure their knowledge when engaged in small-group discussions, affecting their learning positively. This restructuring was not observed as happening as effectively in individual learning. (O’Donnell, 2006; Schmidt, DeVolder, DeGrave, Moust, Patel, 1989; Webb, 2009).
•Small-group discussion appears to activate prior knowledge, mobilizing existing knowledge and restructuring this knowledge by creating new relations between concepts in ways that make sense to the persons who produce the relations (Schmidt, et al., 1989)
•Small-group discussion appears to be one way that learners can learn things that they do not relate to, or that are incompatible with existing beliefs, because it helps the learner become aware of his or her own perspective and the potential limitations of that perspective (Schmidt, et al., 1989; see also Hogan, Nastasi, & Pressley, 2000; Schwartz, 1995).
•When students provide explanations and elaborate upon those explanations, there is increased learning (O’Donnell, 2006; Webb, Franke, De, Chan, Freund, Shein, & Melkonian, 2009).
•In a meta-analysis of forty-two empirical research studies on discussion in the classroom, classroom discussion was shown to be “highly effective at promoting students’ literal and inferential comprehension” (Murphy, et al., 2009).
As illustrated by the above points, students who have the opportunity to speak about their learning or hear how others have construed a problem or approached a solution benefit by seeing that there are multiple ways to approach an issue or problem, expanding the possibilities for exploring an issue in new ways. To realize that there are multiple paths to a solution or to come to understand the strengths and limitations of various paths is a gift that many students never receive. Discussions about life experiences—as related to course content—whether offered by students who have experienced discrimination or by students who have had a change of perspective, expand horizons in ways otherwise not possible. Speakers who struggle with apprehension and get the courage to make a claim and argue for it during a class discussion gain valuable experience that can move beyond the classroom. Oral communication assignments and activities have the potential of changing students: their learning, their outlook on life, their approach to interaction. Students’ engagement with communication activities can have significant effects on their learning, their ultimate success in the professional world, their interactions as citizens, and their interpersonal relationships. Therefore, we suggest it is important for you to consider additional ways in which you can use communication in your course. We advocate, though, that you do this in a way that will help you meet your teaching goals. For some, you might design high stakes, formal, graded assignments that focus on fostering professional communication competencies. For others, professional communication competencies might not be as relevant, so your focus might be on lower stakes, ungraded assignments in which students use communication competencies to learn course material. It is important to note that ungraded communication activities may only be low stakes in terms of grades, but they are in fact quite high stakes in the sense that we ask students to disclose their thoughts and opinions. Class discussion and small-group discussions, for example, are highly self-disclosive activities. We are asking students to disclose their thinking while it may still be quite unformed. We are asking students to make public their opinions and attitudes when those opinions and attitudes may not be shared. We are asking them to let others in on their degree of expertise, their ability to do close reading, their ability to analyze, etc. The stakes for how an individual is seen by others, and how that person sees him or herself are pretty high.
Communication Competence
As you begin to think about what kinds of assignments and activities you want to design for your course, it is important to consider the question: “What counts as a competent communicator in my course or discipline?” Communication competence has been defined in a number of different ways within the communication discipline. Although there are numerous models of communication competence, many share similar assumptions, four of which are important here. First, communication competence is measured in some degree by the achievement of a communicator’s goals. Second, competence must not only focus on individual achievement of goals, but also is dependent on whether the communicator is interacting in ways that are effective and appropriate to the social relationship (Spitzberg, 1988). That means maintaining an awareness of an appreciation for the goals and objectives of the other parties to the communication event: The other member of a dyad, the other members of a group, the audience for a public presentation. Third, communication competence is also dependent on the constraints of the social context in which the communication is occurring. Finally, although we often judge competence solely by looking at the actual behavior displayed, as noted earlier, many scholars suggest competence is not only about the skills of communication, but also about the motivation a communicator has toward particular communication events and the knowledge a communicator has about how to act within that situation (Spitzberg & Cupach, 1984).
The dynamics of competence show through in common experiences. First, consider a typical interaction you might have when buying a car. Your goal might be to get a used car for a less-than-bluebook price. One measure of communication competence is whether you actually purchase the car for your price. Yet, a more full measure of communication competence would also consider the extent to which you used strategies that were effective and appropriate to the relational and situational context. You might get the car for the price you wanted but not use strategies that were necessarily appropriate for the situation. If you communicate in a way that leaves a bad impression, for example, you might not be able to return to this dealership and expect good service on your car. Or, you might eventually get the car for the price you want but it might take you a number of different strategies to be effective with a particular salesperson. In this case, you would not be considered as competent as someone who was able to use more appropriate and effective interactions. Part of being successful in this situation is having the knowledge about what it means to negotiate for a used car and the motivation to engage in the interaction fully. The most competent buyer, then, is the one who not only achieves his or her goals, but who does so with the knowledge and skills appropriate to the relationship and situation.
In a different example, imagine a doctor interacting with a patient. It is paramount that the patient understands the conditions requiring a particular treatment or medication, and the importance of taking the medication as prescribed. The communicative competence of the doctor might be measured in terms of the level of understanding of the patient—but we also know that simply understanding does not necessarily mean compliance. The doctor must take into consideration the concerns and issues (the objectives, if you will) of the patient. Can the patient afford the medication? Are there mitigating factors that will make it difficult or impossible for the patient to enact the treatment plan? In this case, as with our used car example, part of being successful is having the knowledge about what it means to clearly articulate the problems and the ways to address those problems, and also to listen carefully to the needs and concerns of the other party in this interaction, having the motivation to engage fully in the interaction. The most competent communicator, then, is the one who not only achieves his or her goals, but who does so with the knowledge and skills appropriate to the relationship and situation.
Moving back to the classroom, helping your students become competent might not only involve the behavioral aspects, but also the knowledge and motivation aspects relevant to the situation and relationship. As you design graded formal communication assignments or ungraded, more informal, communication activities, it is important to consider the important skills, motivation, and knowledge involved in being successful within the communication activity—to consider how you want students to communicate well in these situations that you design.
Communication as a Situated Activity
Clearly, being successful as a competent communicator can vary across contexts, disciplines, and courses—and it should. Much as writing-in-the-disciplines scholarship argues against a one-size-fits-all approach to writing, we believe communication is a situated, disciplinary activity. We do not advocate for generic communication instruction being dropped in your courses and curricula. Your students need to learn to communicate within your discipline (Dannels, 2001) and within the norms, values, and expectations that your discipline holds. For example, what kinds of questions are valued and expected in the humanities? What form should those questions take? How do these question forms differ from those asked in physics? In sociology? In composition? Should questions lead to answers that are quantitative? Should questions be focused on discerning evidence, or upon expanding vision? Are narrative answers appropriate? How appropriate are anecdotes or testimonials? How new—or old—should evidence be that is provided in answers to questions in order to be deemed legitimate? How do the rules of evidence differ in history from graphic arts, economics, anthropology, or mathematics? Is discussion tightly organized in your discipline? Or, is there an expectation that creativity flows from wide-ranging tangential forays? Are agendas crucial to success? Or, are agendas seen as something that unnecessarily curtail creativity? What evidence is appropriate to sound credible as a speaker in political science? Engineering? Religious studies? Art? Should evidence have been gathered using the scientific method in order to be acceptable? Furthermore, what about organizational structures? Argumentative forms? Professional standards? Additionally, how are expectations for oral communication similar to and/or different from expectations for written communication in your discipline? Are there other forms of communication competence that are valued in addition to writing and speaking? How do all expectations for varied modalities and competencies intertwine? Although these variations in communication competence often go unaddressed, they do exist, and students have to manage them. In this book, we advocate for teaching students how to understand those variations so that they can work within them. Many faculty members tend to assume that students will somehow discern what the variations are. The astute students will. However, many students will never understand that there are criteria being applied that are not just arbitrarily chosen by their professor but are part of a larger cultural system. In a parallel example, students may learn how to write a lab report in an introductory chemistry course and, in doing so, may implicitly learn to differentiate that writing from more creative pursuits. The cultural norms surrounding writing in the sciences are well documented, but such norms are not always clearly conveyed to students.
What does this mean for us as teachers? We need to think proactively about what these rules are for our students—whether in small-group discussions, interactions to facilitate close readings of texts, presentations to illustrate professionalism, or teamwork aimed at advocacy of a particular political agenda—and help students learn to think proactively about them as well. We cannot possibly map all of the elements in any given situation that point to the specific behaviors that will inevitably be competent in that situation (see Pearson & Daniels, 1988). Rather, we need to work with students to help them learn how to discern the characteristics of all situations—academic, professional, interpersonal, civic—that they encounter. We need to help them understand communication within the disciplines, rather than communication as a generic skill that works in the same way in every situation. We also need to help them figure out how to learn what the rules are. Instead of charting a map of competence, we must look at how such maps are constructed and teach students how to discern the nature of that construction. We cannot separate what we are teaching—and what we are asking of our students—from the contexts within which they are functioning. Communicative competence implies knowledge of cultural, social, and interpersonal rules that will facilitate the negotiation of meaning among the participants. Part of our task it to help students gain this knowledge so that they can enact behaviors that are appropriate and successful in their various communication situations.
