Speech: Another facet of technical communication

Three hundred sixty-seven engineering graduates responded to a survey by ranking 30 communication tasks according to their job importance and frequency of performance. The statistical result was that speaking tasks were rated slightly higher than writing tasks for all engineering fields surveyed, independent of whether the respondent spent more time in engineering or in management. Also, more than 50 percent had job-related spoken communication with technical personnel at least daily and with nontechnical personnel at least weekly.