A Study Of The Inlfuence Of Teachers’ Nonverbal Behavior On Teaching Effect In Higher Vocational College English Teaching

In recent years, along with the reform and open door policies throughout China and therapid development of Chinese economy, the development of higher education especially thedevelopment of higher vocational colleges has marched into a speedway. But Englishproficiency of the college students declines actually year by year because the number of therecruited students is expanded gradually in higher vocational college. Some students have greatdifficulty in understanding teaching contents very well and they would lose interests in Englishlearning, which may result in a vicious circle. English teachers in higher vocational collegeshave been trying their best to attack the problem from different angles, while appropriateapplication of nonverbal behaviors of English teachers will be helpful to resolve the problem.Teaching is a sum of a series of communicative processes of a teacher’s lecturing andstudents’ learning. Successful English classroom teaching must put successful communication inthe first position (Wiemann, 1975). Teachers not only impart knowledge to students throughtheir verbal behaviors but also convey all kinds of emotions through their nonverbal behaviors,such as expectations, attitudes and encouragement to students. The“silent language”has asignificant effect on students and teaching. Then the questions are: 1) Does English teacher’snonverbal behavior in classroom affect teaching effect in higher vocational college? And what isits influence? From which aspects does it affect teaching effect? 2）Can English teachers’nonverbal behavior in higher vocational college be improved or modified? And how can Englishteachers improve or modify it?According to the above questions, this study has put forward the following hypotheses:1) English teacher’s nonverbal behavior has significant influence on teaching effect inclassroom in higher vocational college. And it may affect teaching effect from severalaspects and then affects students’test result and English proficiency finally.2) English teacher’s nonverbal behavior can be improved or modified.In order to explore the answers to the above questions and prove the hypotheses, the authorof this thesis conducted an empirical study in Rizhao Polytechnic. And 383students and 4 Englishteachers participated in the experiment. Two teachers and their students were chosen as theExperimental Group (EG) and the other two teachers and their students were chosen as theControl Group (CG). A follow-up investigation to the four English teachers and their studentswas carried out for a term by ways of classroom observation, video recording and interview. And the teachers of EG were required to learn theories related to nonverbal behavior. Meanwhile, inorder to learn about the current situation of English teachers’utilization and realization ofnonverbal behavior in higher vocational colleges, this study also carried out questionnairesurveys and interviews to 20 teachers and some students.In order to collect effective data and ensure the validity, this research employed severalinstruments including questionnaires, classroom observation and interviews, pre-test andpost-test. The data collected are processed and analyzed with the aid of SPSS15.0 and Excel.Results and analysis of the data indicate that 1) English teachers’nonverbal behavior hasobvious influence on teaching effect in higher vocational college English teaching. And it affectsthe teaching effect through influencing the emotional conditions between the teacher and theirstudents, the atmosphere of classroom, students’participation in classroom activities andthen affects students’test result and English proficiency accordingly; 2) English teachers’nonverbal behavior can be improved through some efforts or training.