A Study Of Non-English Major Students' Intercultural Nonverbal Communicative Competence

Nonverbal communication accounts for 65% and even more in people's daily communication. The functions of nonverbal communication are repeating, complementing, substituting, regulating, and contradicting. With the development of economy and society, the opportunities of communicating with an increasing number of people from different countries and different cultures are more and more frequent for Chinese. Nonverbal misinterpretation, however, is a serious barrier to intercultural communication; furthermore, it is to some extent regarded as an unacceptable and unforgivable behavior.Therefore, compared with the students'linguistic (verbal) competence, the students'intercultural communicative competence, particularly, the students'intercultural nonverbal communicative competence should be valued as well in college English teaching.This thesis comparatively analyzes the cultural similarities and differences in nonverbal communication between Chinese and English and reports an empirical study concerning students'intercultural nonverbal communicative competence and the current state of culture teaching in college English teaching.The empirical study was carried out among 200 fourth-year non-English majors at three universities in Changchun in March, 2007. A test on students'intercultural nonverbal communicative competence partly stemmed from a socio-cultural test designed by Wang Zhenya and partly designed by the author of thesis and a self-made questionnaire were used as instruments. In addition, interviews to some subjects and Chinese English teachers were made subsequently.The results of the empirical study reveal the following things:Non-English major students who possess high level of English language competence do not necessarily possess high level of intercultural nonverbal communicative competence; college English classes fail to serve as the best channels for cultivating the students'intercultural nonverbal communicative competence; the foreign teachers from the English culture play the positive role of cultivating the students'intercultural nonverbal communicative competence.According to the results and findings of this study, special attention is called for so as to cultivate the students'intercultural nonverbal communicative competence and implications for culture teaching in college English teaching are brought.