Describes a project preparing students to make political advertisements for television, including details for necessary hardware, script preparation, formatting, time management, and coordination with the television studio. Includes description of each role and broadcasting jargon. (Author/CK)

Ways to improve the role-playing conversations found in most second language textbooks are outlined. It is argued that the conversations are often restrictive, dull, and repetitive, and students respond to them in kind. The teacher can make the target language used more interesting by creating new characters, situations, settings, or objectives.…

Using a brief experiential group activity called "Choosing a Color Exercise" as an introductory measure, this paper explains the basics of group dynamics and reviews the major theoretical relationships between the group's structure, the dynamics of maintenance and task behaviors, and effective individual performances. The types of functional and…

Dialogues, or role-playing, are useful in second language instruction because they increase student motivation to learn the language, enhance self-esteem by showing students they can express themselves in realistic communicative activities, and inhibit students less than non-simulated situations. In one teacher's approach, students have no…

Thirty-one prepracticum counselors were assigned randomly to two methods of confrontation skill training: (a) a cognitive self-instructional modeling group and (b) a discrimination/communication training group. The self-instructional group practiced aloud and, later silently, a set of questions designed to identify and to verbalize a discrepancy…

The strategic interaction method is based on the principle that dramatic tension is the essential ingredient in second language learning, but unlike the drama built on audience spectatorship, classroom drama builds within each student involved in the interaction. Students take scenarios, thematically cohesive events, and create their own dialog as…

Because many parents are beginning to recognize the need for improvement in family communication, a lecture-forum program presented in the South Louisiana area encompasses the skill of listening to children. Defining communication as any behavior that carries a message that is perceived by someone else, the program explores the difference between…

A problem solving procedure known as the Tab Item was used with 21 undergraduate education majors who minored in reading to give the students an opportunity to apply their knowledge in a nonthreatening environment. The problem solving activity centered on a hypothetical fourth grade teaching position that opened at midyear. The students were told…

English as a second dialect (ESD) students are those who have developed linguistic patterns from their parents and other members of their cultural milieu. Since the ESD students seldom find themselves in a setting that demands the use of standard English, they come to higher education with a well developed linguistic pattern that is alien to…

Dissatisfaction with existing preschool teacher training programs, which overemphasize educational theory and neglect practice teaching, led to the development of the preschool teacher training program described in this paper. Initial activities of the program involve group dynamics principles and human relations training to assist students to…

The comparative validity of observations recorded by volunteer telephone crisis workers was examined. To assess workers' listening and response skills, an instrument was devised to rate callers' expressed stress level, confidence in self, confidence in using other community resources, and duration of stress. Groups of 10 workers were invited to…

A brief overview describes a study in which high school students were taught to deal effectively with "critical incidents" in a pre-parenting program. The program described involved pretest; training in anger control, alternative responses to stress, and appropriate responses to behaviors; and posttesting. The study found students could be taught…

Proxemics is a simulation designed to show how man exhibits different behaviors in given distances. Additionally, the simulation, in most instances, shows how people are feeling toward one another at the time a particular distance is used. The four main distances that man observes are intimate, personal, social, and public. Each of these distances…

This paper describes a one-year longitudinal follow up study of the long term effects of role taking training procedures (in which children assumed a number of perspectives) on children's social and cognitive behaviors. Longitudinal and cross-sectional age effects were also analyzed. In an earlier study the effect of two types of role-taking…

This paper describes how faculty at one institution use social inquiry strategies to deal with the complicated issue of student teacher dispositions. It begins by explaining why they chose social inquiry and looking at the use of one social inquiry strategy, role playing, for enhancing appropriate dispositions. The next section presents examples…