Human Communication: The Basic Course (14th Edition)

Book Preface

Human Communication: The Basic Course is designed for the introductory college course that offers comprehensive coverage of the fundamentals of human communication. The text covers classic approaches and new developments; it covers research and theory but gives coordinated attention to communication skills.

This book is addressed to students who have little or no prior background in studying communication. If this will be your only communication course, Human Communication will provide you with a thorough foundation in the theory, research, and skills of this essential liberal art. For those of you who will take additional and advanced courses or who are beginning a major in communication, it will provide the significant foundation needed for more advanced and more specialized study.

What’s New in the Fourteenth Edition

Educational technology designed for the way today’s students read, think, and learn
When students are engaged deeply, they learn more effectively and perform better in their courses. This simple fact inspired the creation of Revel: an immersive learning experience designed for the way today’s students read, think, and learn. Built in collaboration with educators and students nationwide, Revel is the newest, fully digital way to deliver respected Pearson content.

Revel enlivens course content with media interac-tives and assessments—integrated directly within the authors’ narrative—that provide opportunities for students to read about and practice course material in tandem. This immersive educational technology boosts student engagement, which leads to better understanding of concepts and improved performance throughout the course.

Learn more about Revel
http://www.pearsonhighered.com/revel/

Rather than simply offering opportunities to read about and study communication, Revel facilitates deep, engaging interactions with the concepts that matter most. For example, when learning about small group communication, students are presented with a self-assessment that scores their level of apprehension when participating in group discussions. The results of the assessment prompt students to examine their level of anxiety in groups and consider how they could reduce their apprehension in these situations. By providing opportunities to read about and practice communication in tandem, Revel engages students directly and immediately, which leads to a greater mastery of course material.

A wealth of student and instructor resources and interactive materials can be found within Revel, such as:

• Self-Assessments Interactive self-assessments allow students to analyze their own communication styles, enabling them to learn and grow over the duration of the course. A variety of self-assessment styles are offered, including fill-in-the-blank, True or False, and numerical ratings.

• Dialogue and Speech Audio Examples Examples of effective and ineffective communication approaches are enhanced with in-line audio clips, adding dimension and reinforcing learning in a way that a printed text cannot. In the public speaking chapters, speeches include audio annotations by the author.

• Videos and Video Quizzes A variety of videos are interspersed throughout the narrative. Sketchnote videos walk students through important core concepts, while clips of interpersonal and group scenarios and speech samples in public speaking chapters boost mastery of the concepts. Many videos are bundled with correlating self-checks, enabling students to test their knowledge.

• Interactive Figures Interactive figures (such as Figure 3.1: The Sources of Self-Concept and Figure 3.6: Impression Management Goals and Strategies) allow students to interact with the illustrations, increasing their ability to grasp difficult concepts. By allowing students to examine specific parts of a model and offering accompanying real-life examples, broad and theoretical concepts suddenly become easier to understand.

• Interactive Cultural Maps recall the major cultural differences (such as ambiguity tolerance, masculine or feminine orientation, and high or low context) and illustrate how the impact on communication differs around the world. In Revel, readers are given the opportunity to manipulate and interact with the maps.

• Integrated Writing Opportunities To help students connect chapter content with their own personal and social lives, each chapter in Revel offers two varieties of writing prompts: the journal prompt elicits a free-form response to topics in each major section, while the shared writing prompt (one per chapter) elicits a brief response to discussion-oriented questions which students can share with each other.