Donna Stine

Priorities for the Business Communication Classroom: a Survey of Business and Academe

This paper presents the results of a survey of both business and aca demic leaders on the question of what communication skills and prac tices are most important in the world outside the classroom. The survey seems to show that while they differ on some minor points, business ex ecutives and professors generally agree on what subjects and practices should be taught in business communication courses.

Speech Act Theory and Business Communication Conventions

This article applies speech act theory to business communication principles in order to determine why certain messages succeed while others fail. Specifically, it shows how H. P. Grices maxims of quantity, quality, relation, and manner illuminate the writing process in business communication. It also discusses the pros and cons of conventional versus nonconventional business writing strategies. It suggests that speech act theory provides both a theoretical framework for dis cussing business communications and a practical means of analyzing individual messages.

Measuring Skill Gains and Attitudes of Adult Writers in Short Courses.

business, industry, and government. In presenting these courses, teachers are finding they need justifications for the obvious questions about the efficacy of including so much material in so little time-perhaps a day or less. Can employees really learn from short courses offered as part of their on-the-job training? Can adults learn anything at all from, say, a 5-hour short course? Will these gains be evident even one month later? As teachers of short courses, we have been aware of the difficulty of using limited course time to gather personal research data to answer these questions. However, we have had the unusual opportunity of teaching the same short course to university personnel for the past seven years. In a series of studies we have collected data that show participants in short courses make marked improvement in both mechanics (as measured by an objective test) and in business communication skills (as measured by a writing sample).