7The Structure and Content of the Introductory Business Communication Course

Business organizations and academicians alike feel that colleges should teach courses that emphasize oral and written communication skills needed in the work environment (Means, 1983), and employers rate inter-personal communication skills as high among competencies necessary to successful job performance (English and McCormack, 1984). The business communication instructor is faced with the challenge of developing and/or refining these critical skills in an extremely condensed time frame. Although instructors typically feel that at least two courses are needed to adequately develop required skills (Johnson, 1983), the majority of four-year institutions still require only one course in business communication, the majority of which is typically devoted to written com-munication (Johnson and White, 1984). Because many students present in the business communication course lack basic skills in punctuation and grammar, the instructor must somehow address these basic skills in addition to a myriad of topics inherent to the business communication course (Wunsch, 1986). We wondered how much the structure and content of business communication courses vary. For example, is there a master list of subject matter topics? If so, are business communication instructors succeeding in doing it all? Is there a typical or preferred order for presenting topics? And what is the average amount of time spent on each topic