Perceived Importance of Communication Skills and their Predictive Value for Academic Performance
Perceived Importance of Communication Skills and their Predictive Value for Academic Performance

Summary/Abstract: Communication has always been one of the relevant variables influencing the teaching-learning process. The objectives of the current study were (1) to identify those communication skills that students consider to be most important for the teaching activity, (2) to highlight the relationships that exist between students’ perceived interpersonal communication competence, the degree to which they are involved in interpersonal interactions with the teachers and their willingness to communicate, as well as to capture all of these variables’ predictive value for the students’ academic performance. 90 first-year students (mean age 21.89, SD=5.20) have filled out the following questionnaires: Interpersonal Communication Competence Scale, Communication Functions Questionnaire, Interaction Involvement Scale and Willingness to Communicate Scale. The average grade of promotion obtained at the end of the first semester finals was also taken into consideration. Results have indicated that referential and conversational communication skills are considered to be the most significant for the teaching activity and that there are significant links between academic performance and students’ degree of involvement in interpersonal interactions with their teachers. The regression model has shown that the teacher’s use of regulatory and referential communication skills explains a significant amount of the variance in the academic performance, the students’ interaction involvement with their teachers providing a further explanation for the performance achieved by students.

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