Communication Apprehension and Basic Course Success: The Lab-supported Public Speaking Course Intervention

This study examined a lab-supported public speaking course as an intervention for helping reduce overall and context communication apprehension (CA) for high and moderate CA students. In addition, this study queried whether actual lab usage was related to CA reduction and to course grade for those students. Results showed that the lab-supported public speaking course helped high and moderate CAs significantly reduce overall CA and CA in public speaking, group discussions, meetings and interpersonal conversation contexts. There was no difference in reduction of CA level between high and moderate CAs who utilized the speech lab and those who did not. However, high CAs who utilized the speech lab earned higher course grades than those who did not use the lab