On Nonverbal Behaviors And Teacher-student Communication In College Oral English Class

Verbal and nonverbal communications are two channels in the whole process of face-to-face interaction. We communicate through them whenever we speak or not speak whether we are aware of it or not. We may use nonverbal behaviors to communicate such as eye contact, gestures, silence because nonverbal communication is all around us. The attentions of many researchers have always been attracted, as well as English teachers.The oral English teachers'nonverbal behavior is very important. Oral English ability has usually been considered as a main aspect of communicative competence. Oral English competence has captured more and more attention in the foreign language teaching especially in college English teaching and research. Nevertheless, oral English competence of college students is not satisfying. It is acknowledged that oral English competence is weaker than other skills such as reading and writing. The role of nonverbal communication is usually neglected in oral English teaching classroom. Teachers and students communicate frequently in oral English classroom that requires oral English teachers master classroom communication techniques in order to improve the efficiency of oral English communication. Teachers'classroom behaviors, especially nonverbal behaviors can be one of the influencing factors of teaching success. The author explains how to use nonverbal communication in oral English classroom to improve the effect of classroom instruction and further cultivate the students'interest in English learning in terms of eye contact, facial expression, gesture, posture, touch, time, space, silence and appearance. The author holds that the study of nonverbal language is beneficial not only to our linguistic theory but also to the improvement of our classroom teaching and cultivation of cultural consciousness.Chapter 1 is introduction, including reasons of the study, questions of the study, and structure of the whole paper.Chapter 2 is literature review which presents some basic definition, classifications, characteristics, and functions of nonverbal communication. Chapter 3 explains teachers'nonverbal behaviors in the class of oral English teaching.Chapter 4 presents research design, data analysis and findings in the study. Base on the current nonverbal research findings and methods, the author observed college oral English class in order to provide evidence that teacher's nonverbal behaviors will affect teacher-student communication effectively. A videotape was used to record oral English teacher's nonverbal behaviors in class for five times. Teachers and students were investigated with interview and questionnaires respectively.Chapter 5 provides some implications according to the analysis of the above chapters,which includes some methods to achieve effective oral English teaching in the following ways: improving students'nonverbal awareness; designing courses on nonverbal communication; introducing new teaching methods; instilling of cross-cultural nonverbal communication knowledge.Chapter 6 makes a conclusion of the whole study. The author concludes that (1) teacher's nonverbal behaviors are indispensable to oral English classroom; (2) teacher's nonverbal behaviors improve teacher-student communication. It finally presents findings and limitations of the study.On the basis of the above analysis, the author offers significance of the study. On the one hand, it is useful to improve the quality of oral English teaching, take advantage of the nonverbal communication, avoid or reduce the inadequate aspects of only using verbal communication. On the other hand, with the development of society, learning nonverbal communication features is beneficial to the development of learners. Finally, the author points out that it is just an attempt to combine the study of oral English teaching with nonverbal communication, looking forward to bringing a little enlightenment to the study of oral English teaching and nonverbal communication.