Week #1- 9/5 -Prompted Post: 10 Questions: How Effective Are Text Books?

Before even touching a textbook, I came up with this list of ten questions I had about communication. I have sorted them into two categories as to better analyse them.
Informational Questions:
1. What is interpersonal communication?
2. What are all the types of communication?
3. How does communication vary based on age?
4. In what ways does technology effect communication?
5. What makes a person competent at communication?
6. How can I better my communication skills?
Career-Related Questions:
7. How varied are speech therapy careers?
8. How does a communication degree directly correlate to speech therapy?
9. How long should I attend school, to be considered competent in the speech therapy work force?
10. What types of careers are there in the communication field?

Wondering if a text book is effect in answering all questions for a beginner, I attempted to find my answers only using Interpersonal Communication, by Sarah Trenholm and Arthur Jensen. I found that while all my informational questions were answered,  none of my career-related questions were. This means that a text book is only good at delivering unchanging facts.
Informational Answers:
1. Interpersonal communication is communication between two or more people, usually face-to-face.This is also called dyadic communication.
2. There are many types of communication and the lists changes with time. However the main types are intrapersonal, small group, organizational, face-to-face public, and mediated public (or mass).
3. Communication varies due to age. Typically, younger humans are better at simpler communication, like message competence.
4. Technology effects communication in every way. Negatively, easy access to non-face-to-face communication can enable people to have poor communication skills. Positively, easy access to technological communication can help communicationally incompetent people to work on their skills.
5. To be competent at communicating, you must have interpretative competence, role competence, self competence, goal competence, and message competence.
6. To better communication skills, the text book mainly says to simply practice.

To find the answers to my career-related questions I will have to use other resources. I know see that although text books can be a useful resource, to better start learning a subject it is important to look at resources like internet articles, news papers, already employed professionals, and counselors.

Works Cited
Trenholm, Sarah, and Arthur Jensen. Interpersonal Communication. 7th ed. New York: Oxford UP,      2004.
Picture:
"Google." Google. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Sept. 2013.