Importance of Selected Communication Skills for Talking With Peers and Teachers

Adolescents' Opinions

V.Reed{at}cchs.usyd.edu.au

This research explored normally achieving 10th-grade adolescents' opinions concerning the relative importance of 14 communication skills for their own communication when talking with their teachers and when talking with their peers. It also investigated if the adolescents' gender influenced their opinions. Results indicated that the adolescents tended to perceive skillsassociated with characteristics of empathy and considered to be addressee-focused as relatively more important for their communication with their peers. When the adolescents considered their communication with teachers, communication skills related to discoursemanagement strategies assumed relatively more importance. Although gender appeared to influence the types of communication skills considered to be more important than others, gender-based differences in the relative importance of the communication skills were less apparent when gender and communication partnerdifferences were considered together. Future research directions and clinical implications are discussed.

KEY WORDS: adolescents, language, importance of communication skills, peers, teachers, language disorders

Submitted on April 21, 1997
Accepted on March 28, 1998

This article has been cited by other articles:

				J. Drury Adolescent Communication With Adults In Authority Journal of Language and Social Psychology, March 1, 2003; 22(1): 66 - 73. [Abstract] [PDF]