Customer Reviews

Communications in Small Groups: Theory, Process, and Skills

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have used this textbook to teach Introduction to Small Group Communication for 10 years. It is a solid overview of key communication concepts, processes and skills in small group communication. I would disagree with the review written by dharting. The average undergraduate has no difficulty reading this book. It may not be in dharting's Top 10,000, but I suspect the bulk of this list is comic books.

This book starts well, and it's obvious that the authors had the initial intention of making this material accessible to the average student. Of the book's 11 chapters, the first several are easy to read; there are "case studies" following the first 10 chapters which illustrate ideas, generate questions, and give students some material to evaluate. Unfortunately, things take a downward turn toward the middle of the book, plummeting into a death spiral in the last few chapters. It felt as if the authors either got tired of translating complex ideas into easy-to-read language or simply ran out of time. The last few chapters are an uphill slog through heavy jargon - just when you're trying to gear up for the final exam.

From the beginning, they relied too heavily on lists, lists and more lists. There were over 100 "core communication skills" of various types strewn about in parcels of up to 20 at a time, and there was no master list to refer to. There are numerous additional lists (the 4 signs of this, the 8 kinds of that, etc.) which a teacher can plunder for exam material - much to the student's grief. Nowhere is there a list of the 14 ways to mutilate a textbook - I'll just have to experiment.

As for the writing style, it varies from friendly and chock full of real-life analogies to passages like this example from Chapter 11: "Differences in the characteristics of individuals are also a class of variables that complicate a unified communication-based theoretical explanation of group output (Gouran and Fisher 1984). Here, we again define the term individual rather expansively to include any demographic (e.g., gender, age, race), psychographic (e.g., belief, attitude, ego involvement), or sociographic (e.g., student, Mason, argumentative) factor that may impact group outcome." Yes, it's readable on the second or third try, but the chapter goes on and on.

If this is the required text for a Small Group Communication course you're planning to attend, you might want to take another look at your schedule.