With in these general education courses is

With theimplementation of the Republic Act No. 10533 which aims to enhance thePhilippine basic education system by strengthening its curriculum andincreasing the number of years for basic education, majority of the generaleducation courses in the tertiary level of the Commission on Higher Educationare relegated to the senior high school level of the Department of Education.Included in these general education courses is the Oral Communication.      The purpose of the said Republic Act is to”develop productive and responsible citizens equipped with the essentialcompetencies, skills and values for both life-long learning and employment”(Congress of the Philippines, 2012:1). To achieve such goal, the curriculummust be developed in collaboration with the Commission on Higher Education, thegovernment agency that once offered the core courses that are to be offered insenior high school.     Oral communication is clearly deemed to bean important course in an individual’s academic life. Morreale et al (2000)conducted a study that identified the importance of oral communication as arationale for their plan of centralizing the study of communication under theNational Communication Association.

With the strong evidences of the importanceof this course, experts and researchers in this field had tried to furtherdevelop the course through the years. Weide (1995) conducted a study thatsought to determine the various apprehension levels of high schools studentswith regard to their oral communication skills, the benefits students get fromthe course, the preparation of oral communication teachers, and the curriculumemployed by the other schools. In addition, Abdullah (2011) examined the use ofpairworks in enhancing oral communication skills in a school in the United ArabEmirates. In another study, Rajman (2010) determined if a Task-Based Approachcould be useful in teaching oral communication in a school in India.     While there are a number of studies thatfocused on the different aspects of oral communication in relation to theenhancement of the teaching of the course, there is a limited literature on theevaluation of the oral communication curriculum in the Philippines.

Accordingly,this study analyzed the curricula offered in various colleges and stateuniversities in Region IV-A which can serve as basis for the enhancement ofOral Communication course for the Senior High School Program.