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While some stakeholders presume that studying abroad distracts students from efficient pursuit of their programs of study, others regard education abroad as a high impact practice that fosters student engagement and hence college completion. The Consortium for Analysis of Student Success through International Education (CASSIE), compiled semester-by-semester records from 221,981 students across 35 institutions. Of those students, 30,549 had studied abroad. Using nearest-neighbor matching techniques that accounted for a myriad of potentially confounding variables along with matching on institution, the analysis found positive impacts of education abroad on graduation within 4 and 6 years and on cumulative GPA at graduation. A very small increase in credit hours earned emerged, counterbalanced by a small decrease in time-to-degree associated with studying abroad. Overall, the results warrant conclusions that studying abroad does not impede timely graduation. To the contrary, encouraging students to study abroad promotes college completion. These results held similarly for students who had multiple study abroad experiences, and who have studied abroad for varying program lengths.

This study explores connections between design features of faculty-led short-term study abroad programs and resulting changes in students’ global perspectives. Over 2,000 students provided data for this study, completing the Global Perspective Inventory (GPI) before and after studying abroad. Results indicated that program features such as participation in an internship and opportunities for reflection are positively associated with global perspective development while abroad, whereas features such as number of students traveling together and coursework in English are negatively associated with such development. Given the increasing numbers of students who participate in faculty-led short-term abroad programs, research that provides evidence-based recommendations concerning program design is essential to enhancing global perspectives through study abroad.

This paper specifically outlines an investigation of the influence of sustainability education and study abroad coursework on levels of a key component of academic success, student engagement. A quasi-experimental design compared pretest and posttest levels of engagement (measured by the Deep Learning Scale) among undergraduate students enrolled in four types of courses). Data were analyzed using a repeated measures MANOVA and supported two significant 2-way interactions (Sustainability * Time and Study Abroad * Time) suggesting that student engagement (Deep Learning) is more likely to increase with sustainability (than non-sustainability) courses and with study abroad (than non-study abroad/campus courses). Findings provide empirical support for university initiatives that seek to incorporate sustainability coursework and study abroad opportunities into the undergraduate curriculum as means to enhance students’ overall engagement and academic success. The paper provides insights into where sustainability education and study abroad courses have broad potential to promote engagement and, as such, should be considered part of the general learning requirement of university education. In terms of study limitations, the sample is drawn from one university and self-selection bias is possible for students choosing to enroll in study abroad and sustainability-focused courses.

As a result of the fact that judgments of non-native speech are closely tied to social biases, oral proficiency ratings are susceptible to error because of rater background and social attitudes. In the present study we seek first to estimate the variance attributable to rater background and attitudinal variables on novice raters’ assessments of L2 spoken English. Second, we examine the effects of minimal training in reducing the potency of those trait-irrelevant rater factors. Accordingly, we examined the relative impact of rater differences on TOEFL iBT® speaking scores. Eighty-two untrained raters judged 112 speech samples produced by TOEFL® examinees. Findings revealed that approximately 20% of untrained raters’ score variance was, in part, a result of their background and attitudinal factors. The strongest predictor was the raters’ own native speaker status. However, minimal online training dramatically reduced the impact of rater background and attitudinal variables for a subsample of high- and low-severity raters. Implications suggest that brief and user-friendly rater-training sessions offer the promise of mitigating rater bias, at least in the short run. This procedure can be adopted in assessment and other related fields of applied linguistics.

Reflection is an essential process for optimizing student learning outcomes in study abroad. Composing digital stories is a promising strategy for achieving high quality reflection. In this project we developed and explicated a rubric for assessing how students used the d igital storytelling format to reflect on their study abroad experiences. We analyzed undergraduates’ digital stories for evidence of both (a) disciplinary thinking in the field of sustainability and (b) intercultural understanding. Qualitative findings sug gest that the digital story format offers students an opportunity to weave together digital artifacts that they often are already collecting. The process of creating digital stories both promotes and displays reflection. We also present an adapted rubric f or assessing targeted learning outcomes manifest in digital stories produce d by learners studying abroad. Applying the rubric revealed variability among students in achieving the aims of a digital story reflectionassignment.

Higher education institutions are tasked with education for sustainable development, of which the environment is a central pillar. Understanding the demographic factors that influence the establishment of environmental worldviews allows educators to better contextualize sustainability content and discussion. Identifying pedagogies capable of creating learning spaces within which worldviews can shift offers similar opportunities. Using a quasi-experimental design and model building, this study identifies important social psychological antecedents of environmental beliefs, assesses the effectiveness of outbound mobility pedagogy at changing those beliefs and identifies important predictors of the nature and magnitude of those changes. Sustainable outbound mobility courses were effective at increasing environmental worldview compared to a control group. At program commencement, political orientation and business majors were negatively associated with environmental worldview, while female gender was the reverse. For sustainability education courses, only gender was retained as a significant predictor of the nature and change of environmental worldview by the course&rsquo, s end. These results suggest that the factors associated with environmental worldview upon commencement of a course do not necessarily predict the malleability of that worldview in higher education students.

Purpose: Examine association of health literacy (HL) and menu-labeling (ML) usage with sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) intake among adults in Mississippi. Design: Quantitative, cross-sectional study. Setting: 2016 Mississippi Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data. Participants: Adults living in Mississippi (n = 4549). Measures: Outcome variable was SSB intake (regular soda, fruit drinks, sweet tea, and sports/energy drinks). Exposure variables were 3 HL questions (find information, understand oral information, and understand written information) and ML usage among adults who eat at fast-food/chain restaurants (user, nonuser, and do not notice ML). Analysis: Multinomial logistic regressions were used to estimate adjusted odds ratios (aOR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for SSB intake ≥1 time/d (reference: 0 times/d) associated with HL and ML. Results: In Mississippi, 46.8% of adults consumed SSB ≥1 time/d, and 26.9% consumed ≥2 times/d. The odds of consuming SSBs ≥1 time/d were higher among adults with lower HL (aOR = 1.7; 95% CI = 1.3-2.2) than those with higher HL. Among adults who ate at fast-food/chain restaurants, the odds of consuming SSBs ≥1 time/d were higher among nonusers of ML (aOR = 2.3; 95% CI = 1.7-3.1) and adults who did not notice ML (aOR = 1.8; 95% CI = 1.3-2.6) than ML users. Conclusion: Adults with lower HL and adults who do not use or notice ML consumed more SSBs in Mississippi. Understanding why lower HL and no ML usage are linked to SSB intake could guide the design of interventions to reduce SSB intake in this population.

This article calls for a common research model that can be replicated across institutions to systematically collect data on the impact of education abroad participation on college graduation rates. The ultimate goal of the proposed GRAD LEAP (Leveraging Education Abroad Participation for Graduation) model is to facilitate a meta-analysis yielding generalizable findings that can inform both institutional and national education abroad policy. The model consists of two levels of analysis: (a) a descriptive analysis to estimate and compare true graduation rates for education abroad participants and nonparticipants, and (b) a parametric analysis to estimate the value-added of education abroad participation, beyond factors already understood to impact graduation rates. The proposed research model can be expanded to include analysis of the impact of specific program factors on graduation rates (e.g., program duration, program type, student accommodation, etc.).

As human environmental impacts have increased, so has the desirability of sustainable practices in multiple dimensions and at multiple scales. In this context, sustainability literacy has become a desirable outcome of higher education, driving the advance of sustainability as a core component of higher education institutions’ missions at local, regional, and global scales. However, little is known about the efficacy of different instructional delivery modalities of higher education courses in delivering desired outcomes of sustainability education. This study employed a quasi-experimental design to explore the relative influence of a limited range of instructional delivery modalities and sustainability content (study abroad/home campus and sustainability/non-sustainability) on growth of sustainability literacy among university students. Within each modality (study abroad or home campus), studying sustainability was associated with higher sustainability literacy scores than studying non-sustainability. However, studying non-sustainability courses abroad showed comparable growth in students’ sustainability literacy scores compared to studying sustainability on home campuses. These results support not only the idea that sustainability can be taught but also that study abroad, regardless of course content, may be at least as effective at increasing sustainability literacy as home campus sustainability-related courses.

Study abroad has shifted from a marginal opportunity to a core strategy of U.S. colleges and universities, considered integral in the mission to globalize the academic environment. Our study explores the effect of studying abroad and studying about sustainability on students’ global perspectives. A total of 291 university students participated in a pretest/posttest design. Results suggest that study abroad can promote cognitive, intrapersonal, and social developmental global perspectives among college students beyond that achieved via on-campus courses. Sustainability course content did not affect global perspectives, however. Findings warrant the conclusion that even short-term study abroad experiences can meet the globalisation goals of institutions of higher education.

Research on the impacts of study abroad participation on world language proficiency indicates positive and significant associations between sojourning abroad and students' self-reported language skills. In recent years, student engagement and ‘deep-learning' have been found to exert powerful effects on student learning outcomes. However, the extent to which student engagement serves as a pathway to mediate and enhance the impact of study abroad on language learning has not been examined. This chapter uses pre- and post-test surveys and applies experiential learning theory (ELT) to model gains in language proficiency for students who studied world languages abroad versus on-campus. Results of mixed factorial ANOVA and regression path analysis indicate that students who studied world languages abroad experienced significantly greater gains in deep-learning and world language proficiency than students who studied world languages on-campus. This chapter is among the first to connect student deep-learning and engagement to world language learning.

Objective Patient question‐asking is essential to shared decision making. We sought to describe patients' questions when faced with cancer prevention and screening decisions, and to explore differences in question‐asking as a function of health literacy with respect to spoken information (health literacy–listening). Methods Four‐hundred and thirty‐three (433) adults listened to simulated physician–patient interactions discussing (i) prophylactic tamoxifen for breast cancer prevention, (ii) PSA testing for prostate cancer and (iii) colorectal cancer screening, and identified questions they would have. Health literacy–listening was assessed using the Cancer Message Literacy Test‐Listening (CMLT‐Listening). Two authors developed a coding scheme, which was applied to all questions. Analyses examined whether participants scoring above or below the median on the CMLT‐Listening asked a similar variety of questions. Results Questions were coded into six major function categories: risks/benefits, procedure details, personalizing information, additional information, decision making and credibility. Participants who scored higher on the CMLT‐Listening asked a greater variety of risks/benefits questions; those who scored lower asked a greater variety of questions seeking to personalize information. This difference persisted after adjusting for education. Conclusion Patients' health literacy–listening is associated with distinctive patterns of question utilization following cancer screening and prevention counselling. Providers should not only be responsive to the question functions the patient favours, but also seek to ensure that the patient is exposed to the full range of information needed for shared decision making.

Intelligibility problems between native speakers (NSs) and nonnative speakers (NNSs) of English are often attributed to some perceived inadequacy of the NNSs. This emphasis on the NNSs’ role in successful communication is highly problematic, given that intelligibility is a negotiated process between speaker and listener. In some cases, NSs have negative attitudes toward NNSs that impair their willingness to communicate with NNSs and to acknowledge proficient NNS speech. Thus, NS attitudes are also important factors in the success of NS–NNS communication. This article demonstrates a brief intervention that reduces negative language attitudes and thus promotes communication between NS undergraduates and NNSs who are international teaching assistants (ITAs). Two studies are reported. In both, undergraduates engaged in cooperative problem-solving exercises with ITAs. Results show that undergraduates exposed to structured intergroup contact subsequently rated ITAs higher in instructional competence and comprehensibility. Future applications of contact theory promise to improve NSs’ comprehension of nonnative English and to cultivate their global citizenship.

Few studies have employed experimental designs adequate for documenting the value added of studying abroad; that is, learning outcomes above and beyond that which may be achieved in domestic or traditional campus-based courses. Using a pre-/posttest, two-by-two factor design of course location (study abroad vs. home campus) by course subject matter (sustainability vs. nonsustainability), we found significant highest order interactions for three dependent measures of global citizenry. Results suggest that it is the combination of location (abroad) and academic focus that yields the greatest increases in specified learning outcomes for study abroad. Implications for political agendas, academic initiatives, and research directions are discussed.

Homebound older adults constitute a “hardly reached” population with respect to health communication. Older adults also typically suffer from health literacy challenges, which put them at increased risk of adverse health outcomes. Suboptimal interactions with providers are one such challenge. Interventions to improve interactive health literacy focus on training consumers/patients in question preparation and asking. Meals on Wheels volunteers are uniquely suited to coach their clients in such interaction strategies. Seventy-three Meals on Wheels volunteers participated in workshops to train as health literacy coaches. The 3- to 4-hour workshops included units on communicating with older adults, on the nature of health literacy, and on the process of interactive health literacy coaching. Participants viewed and discussed videos that modeled the targeted communication behaviors for older adult patients interacting with physicians. They role-played the coaching process. After 9 months, coaches participated in a “booster” session that included videos of ideal coaching practices. Evaluation questionnaires revealed that participants had favorable reactions to the workshops with respect to utility and interest. They especially appreciated learning communication skills and seeing realistic videos. A measure of knowledge about the workshop material revealed a significant increment at posttest. Fidelity of coaching practices with respect to workshop curriculum was confirmed. This training in interactive health literacy for community-based lay volunteers constitutes one way to implement the National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy for one “hardly reached” population. An online tool kit containing all workshop materials is available.

Health literacy research and practice has focused mainly on the readability of written documents. Yet oral communication plays at least as important a role in the interpersonal ecology in which people make real decisions about their health. Moreover, the single-minded quest for short sentences and simple vocabulary inherent in the readability paradigm can subvert the effort to engage in patient- or consumer-centered communication. Listenability is the quality of discourse that eases the cognitive burden that aural processing imposes. Listenability is a function of oral-based language plus "considerate" rhetorical structures. The Listenability Style Guide presented in this article offers evidence-based recommendations for producing listenable discourse. A study testing the applicability of the Listenability Style Guide to postsurgical discharge instructions was conducted. College students either heard or read discharge instructions composed in either high or moderate listenability. Comprehension was higher for this population in reading than in listening. Across modalities, the high listenability version was easiest to comprehend. Incorporating listenability concerns in research and practice is consistent with emerging, broad conceptions of health literacy and with the dictates of the National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy.

Background: Meals on Wheels (MOW) organizations are ideal community partners for delivering social support relating to health information exchange for vulnerable and home-bound older adults. Objectives: This article illustrates how formative organizational evaluation can be used to adapt health literacy interventions delivered by community partners. Methods: Key informant interviews and ethnographic observations were conducted as part of a formative organizational evaluation of potential community partners. Lessons Learned: The observed brevity of volunteer–client interaction led program planners to incorporate substantial emphasis on communicating with older adults into the health literacy coach training curriculum. Ethnographic observations made clear that program materials had to be portable and fit it in with the mobile nature of MOW delivery. Conclusions: Formative organizational research can greatly increase the chance of successful implementation of public health interventions when those interventions will be implemented in partnerships with community-based organizations in diverse settings and with varying practices.

The cultural and linguistic diversity of the U.S. health care provider workforce is expanding. Diversity among health care personnel such as paraprofessional health care assistants (HCAs)-many of whom are immigrants-means that intimate, high-stakes cross-cultural and cross-linguistic contact characterizes many health interactions. In particular, nonmainstream HCAs may face negative patient expectations because of patients' language stereotypes. In other contexts, reverse linguistic stereotyping has been shown to result in negative speaker evaluations and even reduced listening comprehension quite independently of the actual language performance of the speaker. The present study extends the language and attitude paradigm to older adults' perceptions of HCAs. Listeners heard the identical speaker of Standard American English as they watched interactions between an HCA and an older patient. Ethnolinguistic identities-either an Anglo native speaker of English or a Mexican nonnative speaker-were ascribed to HCAs by means of fabricated personnel files. Dependent variables included measures of perceived HCA language proficiency, personal characteristics, and professional competence, as well as listeners' comprehension of a health message delivered by the putative HCA. For most of these outcomes, moderate effect sizes were found such that the HCA with an ascribed Anglo identity-relative to the Mexican guise-was judged more proficient in English, socially superior, interpersonally more attractive, more dynamic, and a more satisfactory home health aide. No difference in listening comprehension emerged, but the Anglo guise tended to engender a more compliant listening mind set. Results of this study can inform both provider-directed and patient-directed efforts to improve health care services for members of all linguistic and cultural groups.

Recent trends in the conceptualization of health literacy lead toward expansive notions of health literacy as social practice, rather than as a narrower cognitive capacity to understand health-related texts and materials. These expansive and complex constructions of health literacy demand tools for assessing individuals' propensities to actively seek information in their interactions with health care professionals and other health information sources. This study proposes a measure of this information-exchange component of health literacy and examines its capacity to predict outcomes and processes such as satisfaction with health care and comprehension of spoken health messages. Results for this sample ( n = 334) of low socioeconomic status older adults (mean age = 74.70 years) reveal that indices derived from the Measure of Interactive Health Literacy (MIHL) do contribute unique variance-apart from document-based health-literacy--on several criterion measures such as satisfaction with health care services. Comprehension checking improved health message listening comprehension, but for White participants only. These findings invite further investigations of interactive health literacy involving different populations, message topics, and elicitation methods.

In high-stakes oral proficiency testing as well as in everyday encounters, accent is the most salient aspect of nonnative speech. Prior studies of English language learners' (ELLs') pronunciation have focused on single parameters of English, such as vowel duration, fundamental frequency as related to intonation, or temporal measures of speech production. The present study addresses a constellation of suprasegmental characteristics of nonnative speakers of accented English, combining indices of speech rate, pause, and intonation. It examines relations between those acoustic measures of accentedness and listeners' impressions of second-language oral proficiency. Twenty-six speech samples elicited from iBT TOEFL® examinees were analyzed using a KayPENTAX Computerized Speech Laboratory. Monolingual U.S. undergraduates (w = 188) judged the speakers' oral proficiency and comprehensibility. A multiple regression analysis revealed the individual and joint predictiveness of each of the suprasegmental measures. The innovative aspect of this study lies in the fact that the multiple features of accentedness were measured via instrumentation rather than being rated by judges who may, themselves, be subject to rating biases. The suprasegmental measures collectively accounted for 50% of the variance in oral proficiency and comprehensibility ratings, even without taking into consideration other aspects of oral performance or of rater predilections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Litigation has forced tobacco companies like Philip Morris to disclose more than 7 million internal documents, including previously confidential public relations plans. We draw from this archive, as well as from activist materials, to demonstrate that, despite vigorous industry efforts to thwart them, activists in this case employed strategies of values advocacy and inoculation and capitalized on economic benefits to persuade publics. This watershed case poses continued challenges for the 2-way symmetrical or mixed-motive theoretical model of public relations. Accounting for public relations activism and understanding its voice in influencing contemporary public debate requires that scholars move beyond this widely accepted model that stresses compromise between activists and organizations. An alternative rhetorical theory of activist public relations is posited to account for groups that refuse to accommodate opponents.

The linguistic stereotyping hypothesis holds that even brief samples of speech varieties associated with low-prestige groups can cue negative attributions regarding individual speakers. The converse phenomenon is reverse linguistic stereotyping (RLS). In RLS, attributions of a speaker’s group membership trigger distorted evaluations of that person’s speech. The present study established a procedure for ascertaining a proclivity to RLS for individual listeners. In addition to RLS, variables reflecting degree of multicultural involvement (e.g., proportion of friends who are nonnative speakers, amount of language study) predicted speech evaluations. Although the RLS measurement procedure outlined here requires more demanding administration than mere paper-and-pencil self-reports, it has the advantage of reflecting authentic RLS processes. Measuring individuals’ RLS levels can help screen teachers, job interviewers, immigration officials, and others who are called on to make judgments about the oral proficiency of speakers of nonprestige language varieties.

Introduction: To more fully understand the impact of specific language attributes on deception in corporate communication, we used a stratified random sample of tobacco industry documents to test a small number of individual potential automated linguistic indicators of corporate deception: cognitive-emotional verbs, allness and superlative terms, nonbinding verbs, and group mentality. Methods: Texts from the Tobacco Documents Corpus were categorized by audience addressed (industry internal/external) and company of origin, and compared for incidence of the deceptive language indicators. Results: Cognitive-emotional verbs were strongly associated with likely deception and most prevalent for external audiences and documents produced by the Tobacco Institute, an industry front group. Cognitive-emotional verbs include believe, think, seem, feel and realize, in opposition to action verbs (e.g. throw). Discussion: Linguistic measurements of cognitive-emotional verbs may help pinpoint deceptive and misleading corporate communication. Verb choice and the use of different classes of verbs may reflect corporate linguistic deception.

Research on traditional classrooms paints a picture of teachers controlling talk patterns and of students producing minimal amounts of mainly procedural talk, recitation-type talk, or both. Often this bleak state of affairs is attributed to teachers' overreliance on unauthentic display questions—questions that impose tight thematic control and therefore purportedly promote recitation rather than classroom dialogue. Contrary to this blanket indictment of display questions, however, a small number of previous studies have concluded that teacher display questions are not inherently inimical to engaged student talk. This study examined a small 4th-and 5th-grade English language learner classroom in which students were previously found to have produced a substantial number of socially engaged and structurally elaborated utterances. A new analysis of thematic episodes containing instances of extended student talk revealed that authenticity of teacher questions was not a necessary condition for triggering such student utterances. Indeed, text-based display questions that inquired about details of readings obviously known to the teacher elicited elaborated responses. The distinguishing characteristic of teacher questions that elicited extended student talk was found to be their contingency on previous student utterances rather than whether they were open-ended or inquired about known information.

The present study examines the role of a Vietnamese heritage language school in cross-cultural adaptation, as operationalised by the confluence of two independent variables, language competence and integrated cultural identity. To characterise the students' language competencies and degree of integrated cultural identities, interview questionnaires of virtually a complete census of students in the school were analysed via descriptive statistics. Correlation and regression analyses were conducted to determine relations between each independent variable and demographic factors (such as age at arrival in the USA and family milieu) and to determine relations between each independent variable and school factors (such as pattern of attendance and class participation). The findings suggest the heritage school experience was related to components of Vietnamese language competency but had little impact on integrated cultural identity. Age at arrival in the USA and family milieu played a more significant role in th...

Causal constructions in English convey or deflect responsibility more or less strongly depending on which of three causality markers initiate the phrase or clause. Causal constructions initiated by because usually express strong causality, whereas since and as, when used to express causality, convey a weaker, disjunctive relation. The tobacco industry has engaged in a ferocious campaign to deny responsibility for causing adverse health effects like cancer. Accordingly, our data are comprised of corpora sampled from about four million previously internal documents that tobacco companies were forced to disclose as a result of litigation. We hypothesized that the valence of the causal claim (incriminating, exculpating, marketing advantage, or marketing liability for the tobacco industry), would determine the distribution of causal constructions initiated with because versus since and as. Findings confirmed that causal claim valence covaried significantly with causal marker choice. Statements framed with because constructions challenged tobacco's responsibility for causing disease or marketing losses. Statements that incriminated tobacco or admitted marketing liabilities were more likely to use disjunctive (causal since) phrasing. This application of pragmatic analysis to corpus linguistics is shown to be a valuable paradigm for evaluating stylistic means chosen with a view toward assuming or deflecting speaker responsibility in practical discourse.

This article is a first report from a system-wide initiative to document learning outcomes accruing from participation in study abroad. It focuses on one element of that initiative, a comparison of several outcomes between study abroad participants and non-participants attending sixteen varied public institutions within a state university system.

As a result of litigation over the past decade, major tobacco companies were compelled to make public a broad range of previously confidential documents. We have created a series of corpora from the tobacco industry documents (TIDs) for three purposes: (1) to establish baseline descriptions of various linguistic features of this unique set of texts; (2) to identify TIDs in which rhetorical manipulation (“deception”) may have occurred and to estimate the extent and prevalence of manipulation; (3) to analyze manipulation in order to classify it and develop means to identify similar manipulation in other industry document sets. Our threepart corpus creation strategy employed rigorous sampling methods. First, we drew a limited sample from the largest collection of TIDs, to determine a representative classification of text types and to estimate their proportions within the overall body of texts. Then, we created a reference corpus (500,000+ words) constituting a stratified random sample of all TIDs, whether or not they exhibit manipulation. Finally, we compiled a corpus of texts presumed to exhibit rhetorical manipulation. We assumed that multiple drafts of a text or versions of a text prepared for different audiences constituted rhetorical manipulation. This article presents our experience with the sampling methods utilized in this corpus-building process and our findings regarding text types comprising the reference corpus.

The present studies explored how adolescents process information in making decisions about risk behavior. We studied two developmental aspects of adolescent egocentrism: personal fable (a sense of invulnerability) and imaginary audience (focus on others), along with individual difference variables (sensation seeking, self-esteem, and peer pressure). The studies investigated the effects of a message variable, elaboration demand, which is driven by a developmental view of adolescents' cognitive processing. Results of 3 studies indicated the deep elaboration message was partially effective in changing message perceptions and adolescents' intentions to behave in ways to reduce risks. The message type interacted with developmental indicators (age and cognitive development), gender, and topic to explain behavioral intentions, message perceptions and retention.

A binocular vision of scholarship in communication education melds perspectives from the fields of communication studies and educational studies. From that vantage, three topical domains can be regarded as comprising communication education: (1) communication about education, (2) education for communication, and (3) communication in education. Focusing on the third of these areas reveals how communication studies and educational studies might better inform each other. For example, the voluminous body of research on teacher immediacy informs us a great deal about student perceptions and individual differences, but sheds little light on patterns of situated discourse in teaching-learning encounters. Conversely, research on classroom discourse and instructional conversations enriches our understanding of interaction patterns in educational settings, but are less revealing about how these encounters are mediated by or affect student individual differences. The richest programs of research may be those drawing...

Study abroad is believed to be a transformative learning experience for students. However, the extent to which study abroad adds value beyond what is possible on campus needs to be demonstrated. In this paper, we document the learning outcomes assessment undertaken by a faculty-led study-abroad program at a large university in the U.S. Southeast. Specifically, we describe the development of a theory-based pedagogical model of global citizenship for short-term study abroad and efforts to document student learning associated with its constructs. The results of these efforts indicate that when student learning outcomes and study-abroad pedagogy are aligned with theory, and rigorously assessed, the opportunity to demonstrate learning is possible, and opportunities for instructional improvement present themselves.

This study investigated ways in which gender identity is enacted within written language. Participants first supplied a self-descriptive letter that might be filed with a dating service. Next, they responded to a fabricated personal ad posted by a potential dating partner. Contextual factors in this study were writing task (self-description or response to a personal ad) and the gender role “bid” (either instrumental or expressive) of the hypothetical personal ad writer. Individual difference variables were biological gender and measured gender role orientation. Texts were coded for frequency of seven gender-typed language features (e.g., hedges, first-person pronouns). Writers’ own gender role schemata affected their language use, as did their biological sex. Contextual factors were more potent than the writers’ gender in affecting these stylistic features. Overall, writers altered their styles to complement (rather than converge toward) the apparent gender role orientations of their interlocutors.

Previous research has rarely examined listening/reading differences in conjunction with conceptually relevant discourse variation. In the present study, college students either listened to or read ghostwritten speeches or magazine articles. Participants also completed tests of listening ability, reading ability, prior knowledge, and amount of invested mental effort. Consistent with listenability theory, results indicated that listeners and readers alike best comprehended oral‐based discourse. Reading was superior for acquiring information, though it required greater investment of mental effort.

The standards movement aims to reform K‐12 education in the U.S. by raising expectations for student performance, by applying expectations to all children, and by monitoring achievement through authentic assessments. Prospects for implementing oral communication instruction in classrooms can be enhanced by aligning with this movement. New Standards is a nationally based, highly visible program for developing and promulgating performance standards in several curricular areas, including speaking/listening/viewing. The oral communication standards incorporated into New Standards promote several principles. (1) Oral communication assessment can be integrated into common learning activities; by the same token, oral communication activities facilitate learning. (2) Oral communication skills manifest developmental patterning. (3) Oral communication instruction bridges individual expression with academic discipline. (4) Oral communication is learned across the curriculum. (5) Speaking and listening performance ca...

Welcome to our chapter. I use “our” because in some very important ways you and I will be co-constructing this text. In fact, we're already underway. You have already started, no doubt, thinking about me, your author. And I have been thinking long and hard (too long, my editors would probably say) about you, my audience. As I compose, read, and recompose the words I have set out for you to read, I am ever trying to anticipate how you will react. I am trying to write and read through your eyes as well as through my own. I am trying to assay whether your responses will match my intentions. If some of my assumptions miss the mark about you as a reader, I hope you will nonetheless find a way to temporarily inhabit the roles and attitudes I am inviting you to try on, and in that way become the audience for this chapter.

Shifting demographics in the medical professions place increasing numbers of North American patients in contact with pliysicims of non-Western ethnolinguistic backgrounds. Extrapolating from previous language and attitude research in other professional contexts, there is reason to suspect that American patients may have negative responses to nonnative Western-English-speaking physicians (NNWESPs). Participants listened to an AIDS prevention message delivered in one of threeaccents: highly marked South Asian, moderately marked South Asian, and standard American. These were associated with either a male ethnic South Asian or a male Anglo-American physician. Outcome measures included the Speech Evaluation Instrument, judged professional competence, message recall, and intention to comply. Results indicate smalI effws for perceived accent and ethnicity on evaluational reactions to physicians. Results and intentions comply were immune effects of physician etbnolinguistic diversity. Results invite replication u...

Teachers' evaluations of student writing are susceptible to the influence of extraneous factors, including stereotyped expectations based on students' ethnolinguistic identities. Even teachers' detection of surface errors in student writing is vulnerable to such expectancy sets. Non-native speakers of English (NNSs) who exit sheltered ESL classes may therefore be subjected to unduly negative evaluations due to mainstream teachers' negative expectations. On the other hand, it is possible that mainstream teachers overcompensate and are especially lenient with NNSs. The present study attributed fabricated student identities to a standard set of essays into which specific errors had been intruded. The fictional students were either Southeast Asian, Northern European, or U.S. native English speakers (NESs). Mainstream composition teachers evaluated the writing samples using rating scales, and they also wrote marginal comments and signs. Analyses indicated an advantage favoring the Asian writers over the NES writers in ratings of overall composition quality. No differences in the number of errors detected for each writer nationality were found. On the other hand, teachers' ratings of NNS writing were best predicted by the number of surface errors they detected. Ratings of NES writing, in contrast, were justified by marginal notations and comments; teachers tended to write longer comments when they judged the writing to be poor. The significance of the study is to enjoin composition teachers to reflect on their differential dependence on surface error when evaluating NES and NNS writing.

The theory of reasoned action (TRA) was employed as a framework for understanding adolescents’ behavior that could put them at risk for contracting AIDS. The TRA focuses on the role of subjective norms and attitudes toward behavior to predict behavioral intentions and risk‐avoidance behavior (condom use). Adolescent participants (N = 492) in three groups (8th grade, 11/12th grade, and early college) filled out questionnaires. Results supported Ajzen and Fishbein's contentions regarding the role of attitude and subjective norms, but subjective norms also functioned as a predictor of attitudes. Additional evidence indicated models by gender and sexual experience were different. For sexually active adolescents, attitude was a better predictor of both behavioral intentions and condom use than subjective norms, but for sexually inactive adolescents, subjective norm was a better predictor. For male adolescents, subjective norm was a better predictor of both behavioral intentions and condom use than attitude, bu...

This article proposes a product of adolescent development, egocentrism, as an important factor in developing health promotion messages. The relations between egocentrism, an outgrowth of adolescent cognitive development, and several persua- sive outcomes related to adolescent risk behavior are explored. Two measures of egocentrism-imaginary audience (IA) and personal fable (PQ-are described as they relate to adolescents' risk related behaviors and other variables. The relations between egocentrism, gender, and age are also discussed. Data are presented briefly to illustrate the theoretical argument. Given the importance of influencing adolescents' risk behaviors, egocentrism is important, as understanding PF and IA can influence design of health messages. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Previous research demonstrates a decline across time in gender-exclusive language among language users who are occupationally mandated to conform to nonsexist language guidelines (e.g., journalists). Little prior research, however, bears on changes across time among language users who are not thus constrained. Some prior studies do suggest that individual difference variables such as psychological gender-role schema and attitudes toward sexist language predict the degree to which individuals will adopt these language reforms. Study 1 addresses the diachronic issue by examining gender-exclusive language in public speeches delivered by male business leaders across three decades. Gender-exclusive language did decline from the 1960s to the 1970s. Study 2 examines both gender-exclusive and gender-inclusive language in the writing of male and female college students in two writing tasks. Study 2 also considers language users'gender-role schema and their attitudes toward sexist language. For production of gender-exclusive language, males greatly exceeded females. For production of gender-inclusive language, an inverse relation with instrumental (traditionally male) gender-role orientation was found. Moreover, biological males and females each controlled distinct repertoires of linguistic strategies. Situational differences (an expressive vs. an instrumental writing task) exerted more powerful effects on gender-inclusive language than did gender. These findings dictate that simplistic formulations about relations between gender-related attitudes and language usage should be recast.

ITAs often experience particular difficulty balancing their roles as teachers with their roles as students. Student communication skills training is warranted for ITAs because it may be more motivating than instructional skills training, because it captures an otherwise elusive segment of the clientele, and because learning can transfer to ITAs' own teaching repertoires. Such a program can begin with a focus on naming and social identity. The bulk of the program focuses on communication practices for participative learning such as small group problem solving and whole-group responding. A typical workshop concludes with a forum for student concerns, often focusing upon how to interact with one's academic advisor.