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
