Teaching At-Risk High School Students Communication Competence Skills through Facework and Improved Self-Monitoring

The relationship between communication apprehension and at-risk students has been given a fair amount of attention in academic research. While it has been determined that at-risk students tend to have higher degrees of communication apprehension,1 little research has been done to explore what other communication skills deficiencies at-risk students might possess. Two studies were conducted to assess a group of 29 at-risk student’s communication abilities. In the first study, we compare the students’ competence and communication apprehension to national averages and discover that the students find themselves above average in competence but also more apprehensive about communicating. The second study investigated the efficacy of a communication curriculum centered on self-monitoring skills in order to address the specific deficiencies in communication apprehension. Post-test data indicates that students increased their self-monitoring skills