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Business research identified communications apprehension as a problem for improving communication skills. Research has indicated that communication skills are very important to employers in hiring and promotion decisions. This study provides empirical evidence as to whether the accounting program has contributed toward lowering the level of communications apprehension on two groups of accounting students: those who are entering the program and others who are exiting the program. Findings show that there is no significant difference between the level of communications apprehension between the groups when they entered the program and the time when they exited the program, raising a question of the potency of the accounting program in alleviating the communications apprehension of accounting students. Some remedial measures have been suggested.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the ways in which postgraduate study in vocational fields supports the development of advanced competences amongst mid‐career professionals.

The extensive written communications between health and safety professionals taking a postgraduate course in health and safety management and their tutor were investigated to determine the competence domains where learning was taking place or attempted. The individual written communications were analysed and each issue raised allocated to a learning area. The quantitative results for each area were determined. The learning areas were assigned to one or more competence development domains.

The quantified results demonstrate that the main domain where mid‐career professionals on this postgraduate course were most strongly challenged to learn and develop in advanced competences was the meta‐competence domain on the Cheetham and Chivers model.

This study was based on written communications passing between a limited number of students and one tutor on a single postgraduate study programme. There is clearly great scope to extend this form of research given the large number of postgraduate vocational study programmes now undertaken by mid‐career professionals.

Tutors need to focus strongly on supporting the very demanding learning leading to the growth of meta‐competencies. Given the ready availability of relevant factual information to mid‐career professionals in the information age, there is much less need to focus on teaching facts, although supporting the interpretation and application of such factual information by students retains great importance.

Few other studies exist which attempt to analyse written communications between tutors and postgraduate students on professional/vocational courses in terms of how such courses are developing professional competences.

The anxiety that usually comes with a speaking performance is said to be both personal and situational. Researchers have over the years sought to understand how the combined effects of personal traits of an individual and situational conditions such as the nature of the speaking environment, the size of the audience and negative perception over the outcome of a speech, affects a person’s ability to effectively communicate. While studies on speech-related anxiety in the academic environment is not new (Basic, 2011; Behnke et al., 2006), the attention of many of these studies has focused on students rather than lectures/instructors. While this study is not the first to focus on the role of lecturers in reducing the incidence of speech anxiety, the purpose of this paper is to stress the role of lecturers in reducing speech-related anxieties and its attendant effects on the academic and professional performances of students. It was found out that most speech-related anxiety is largely situational, rather than personal. The study found that out of fear of being negatively evaluated, students became highly apprehensive when asked to perform a speech-related task in the classroom. This, the study found, can potentially have adverse effects on the academic and professional performance of students. Most importantly, the study established the significant role of lecturers in managing a friendly and pleasant environment that facilitate speaking and positive learning outcomes. As Varron (2011) asserts: “the teacher is the one that facilitates the whole process of leaning and create favorable environment, where there is a smooth flow of communication.”

In total, 40 respondents from the School of Communications of the African University College of Communications were sampled for the study. The selection of only communication students was premised on the study’s quest to unravel the irony inherent in the fact that those communication students that are by their training required to be voluble, tend to be apprehensive, especially under the classroom situation. Doing this was to inevitably help to find out whether or not there is a relationship between an individual’s career choice and the behavioral tendencies such a person is likely to exhibit. Again, the fact that communication students are more competent to speak on issues regarding any subject on communication makes them an ideal choice for this study. A stratified probability sampling method was used to group the sample into various layers (levels). The study using stratified sampling grouped the various respondents into their various levels (strata) and sampled ten respondents from each level. This was to help the study ascertain whether or not any relationship existed between a student’s level and the level of their speaking apprehension. A questionnaire, close and open ended, was employed as the study’s principal instrument for data. Each respondent was given a questionnaire each to respond to. A “descriptive statistical measure was used to describe the characteristics of the sample, whereupon conclusions were generalized for the entire study population.” In addition, graphs, charts, and frequency tabulation made from the coded data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences, after which the corresponding interpretation was assigned. To ensure accuracy, data were coded, entered, and cleaned. Tables and figures from the SPSS helped in making the results of the study easier to interpret and understandable.

The outcome of the administered questionnaire indicated that negative evaluation was caused by lack of adequate preparation, inferiority complex, fear of derision and needless comparisons among students. In respect of how fear of derision causes anxiety, it was found that fear of derision stifles students’ desire to be heard, makes students timid and prevents class participation. On the issue of why some student were deficient in the use of English language, it was found that poor reading habits, overuse of vernacular, obsession with the use of pidgin and apprehension following from the fear of making mistakes were the major causes.

The authors consider the proposed study original both in conceptualisation and design. The main question being interrogated stems from identified gaps in the literature and the study intends to fill these knowledge gaps. The study’s originality stems from the fact that there is paucity of information on the subject of study in the context of Ghana.

The communications industry faces a recruitment crisis. Despite the pivot to hybrid working and the ever-increasing number of young people opting to study the discipline, over half of recruiters in the public sector and three quarters of those recruiting for agencies struggle to fill vacancies. This chapter examines these trends from a radical feminist perspective, arguing the communications industry is squandering young, female talent by failing both new entrants and mothers returning to work after childbirth. This analysis is based on a series of surveys undertaken between 2020 and 2022 to examine the expectations and lived experience of women, and in particular communications students and mothers, working in or aspiring to work in the sector. Over 73% of the women surveyed had experienced gender-based discrimination and harassment, and 66% had been forced to choose between their careers and having a child. Of the young entrants to the profession surveyed, 88% believed becoming a mother would negatively impact their career, while 32% had experienced discrimination while undertaking their student placement. Analysis of these data indicates the sector faces a crisis of its own making by failing to provide a workplace culture worth working in. The chapter concludes only a direct challenge to male hegemony can redress the gender imbalance, free up talent to meet skills shortages and provide lasting change for women working in communications. It offers a series of recommendations for how professional bodies can address these issues and empower young women to achieve the career outcomes they deserve.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a selected bibliography of recent resources on library instruction and information literacy.

Introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2013.

Provides information about each source, discusses the characteristics of current scholarship and describes sources that contain unique scholarly contributions and quality reproductions.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

The introduction of Web‐based course instruction into an existing degree programme offers the opportunity to re‐examine models supporting learning and the transfer of knowledge among students enrolled in such courses. By removing the barriers of time and place, instructors can create and sustain student learning communities supported by interactive communication tools grounded in asynchronous learning models. The instructor’s role moves to that of a facilitator who seeks to stimulate interactions between students and between students and the instructor, in the pursuit of improved learning and knowledge base construction.

The purpose of this paper is to document both, the challenges faced by a cohort of postgraduate students undertaking capstone research projects in an Accounting Conversion Master Degree Programme (ACMP), and the strategies used by teachers in response to those challenges during the COVID-19 lockdown period.

Written communications originating from students were analysed to identify areas of difficulties faced by them. These communications were thematically grouped and reflected upon through the lens of constructivist and behaviourist perspectives of learning.

The study found that students were severely challenged in sense-making with conceptual, application and judgement-related issues and understanding of the administrative requirements of the module. Innovative strategies used by teachers to resolve each of these issues were documented. While some strategies can be replicated in future periods, some are not sustainable as they have ramifications on other aspects of teaching and learning.

There are no known studies in this genre, conducted especially during a pandemic period.

Research has shown that the discursive patterns students use in their email interactions with their teachers are not linguistically and socio-culturally appropriate. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to try to explore how socio-cultural conventions influence the Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ choices of discourse strategies in their email communications within an academic context. The study, then, investigates the impact of social distance and gender on the stylistic features of students’ email texts.

The email texts written by 180 university students majoring in Applied Linguistics were systematically analyzed based on such patterns as opening and closing moves, reduced forms, text connectives, symbolization and emoticons. Alternatively, three semi-structured interviews were conducted to gauge the participants’ motives underlying the selection of particular discourse features.

The findings revealed that students, despite many statements to the contrary, were aware of the socio-cultural conventions governing email writing style and could write status-appropriate email messages, which rightly reflected the etiquette of email communication within an academic context.

The findings may offer certain benefits to EFL teachers and students.

The paper highlights understanding of a specific social group in relation to their interaction with different status social groups in the context of a specific communication technology and to some extent the perceived effectiveness of such approaches by those invoking them.

This paper presents recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy, providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering various library types, study populations and research contexts.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, reports and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2020.

The paper provides a brief description of all 440 sources and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians, researchers and anyone interested in a quick and comprehensive reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

Both accounting professionals and accounting academics have noted the importance of communication skills for the career success of students. Further, the general consensus from the academic and practitioner literature is that these communication skills are an area in which many students could use improvement. One factor that has been shown to impact the improvement and development of these skills is communication apprehension.

In this chapter, we describe a combination of pedagogical methods we employed in tax classes at two universities to reduce written communication apprehension among students. More specifically, we draw ideas from communications research which suggest that increased writing opportunities, progressively increasing the weighting of the assignments, using models and examples for study and comparison, and trying to make feedback more effective may help to reduce written communication apprehension. We implemented this suggested approach by using a series of assignments that incorporated writing components.

Results suggest that writing apprehension reduced from the beginning of the semester to the end of the semester. Further, the reduction in writing apprehension was even greater for those students who began the semester with high written communication apprehension. In addition, the results of the survey questions at the end of the semester suggest that the methods also improved students’ confidence in preparing tax-related written communication.