Xin-An Lu – författare

There is a mistaken assumption in many social sciences that knowledge will automatically translate into action. Based on this assumption, textbooks for basic oral communication, a required course in many college campuses, attempt to ameliorate students'' communicational behaviors by teaching them knowledge about communication: theories, concepts, and terms. Not only failing their attempt, these textbooks also estrange students by belaboring what is "common sense" in students'' perception.

However, in reality, numerous social problems are not because of a lack of knowledge, but because of a lack of action or a lack of practice of the knowledge. In an effort to shift attention from knowing communication to doing communication, Cases of Problematic Communication confronts its readers with realistic cases of problematic communication and offers questions to facilitate your reflection and communicational action. Promising to transform the students'' learning from one of passive cognition to one of reflective action, this booklet can also serve as a resource for commercial textbooks for oral communication.

Public speaking is one of the things many fear the most. This fear is justified-Many eyes to look into and many minds to contend with. Thoughts are elusive. The catcher of powerful thoughts-the apt words-are even more elusive. Yet, you do not need to despair. By standing on the shoulders of great orators, you can also speak with facility, felicity, cogency, and potency.

Great orators have produced immortal thoughts couched in immortal words. This book selects the gems and the most versatile phrases in the top 100 speeches in the history of American rhetoric of the last century, so that you do not have to tire your mind and tax your time spending months going through all these speeches to mine the diamonds of powerful thoughts and felicitous words. This book furnishes you with powerful and ready blocks for the efficient construction of edifices of powerful ideas embodied in powerful words.

The top 100 speeches are the most significant American political speeches of the 20th century, according to 137 leading scholars of American public address. Their inclusion and ranking are based on their "social and political impact," "rhetorical artistry," "eloquence," and "power."

Language is a passport to a culture. Slang, probably the most lively part of a language, is especially so. Understanding of a culture''s slang is a great lens through which to know the authentic life of the members in that culture. Slang can also serve to spice up conversations with these members.

In this light, a collection is made of undergraduate college students'' slang-by college students themselves. For authenticity, more attention is given to comprehensiveness than to political correctness, although racist terms are avoided. This concise collection promises to give you a better understanding of and a closer connection with undergraduate college students.

Rather like the nerves in human body, communication forms the sinew and tendon of any social body. The quality of everyday life is not only affected by the way we design our work and institutions, but also (perhaps more importantly) by the way we interact and communicate with each other. This booklet attempts to help its readers to become more effective oral communicators in various scenarios.

Every chapter in this booklet is largely divided into three parts:(1) reflective and motivational quotations,(2) guidelines for communication in a certain context, and (3) versatile phrases for that context.

The quotations are intended to emotionally and philosophically motivate the readers to strive for better communication. The guidelines are intended to cognitively guide the readers in their communication practices. And the versatile phrases are intended to logistically supply for the readers'' communication practices.

Our actions in education, business, and government are no longer guided by conscious ideals, but by entrenched practices that are products of expediency, indolence, and even tyranny. Inveterate and ubiquitous problems abound. Students hate school. Employees dislike their jobs. Professors become disinclined toward teaching. Boredom and procrastination are everywhere. There are promotion requirements (such as scholarly publications by college professors) that promote nothing and benefit none except to move the person into the next nominal category along the spectrum of the organizational ladder. We are plagued with senseless competitive patterns and numerical evaluations that make life a mere matter of "rat race", the winning of which does not uplift us into the sublimity of humanity, but trammel us in the degradation of being "rats".

Essays in this book reflect on and search for answers to widespread and inveterate problems that degenerate modern life into mere livelihood. Products in sober solitude rather than in the societal cacophony, most essays in the book were written during the author''s doctoral studies.