A Study Of Acquaintance With Body Language Use In EFL Learning Among Vocational College English Majors

The communication of human beings is made through two ways: verbal communication and nonverbal communication. Both of them have played a key role in communication. Body language is an indispensable component of nonverbal communication behavior. The function of body language shouldn't be neglected in intercultural communication. However, body language varies in different cultures. The proper behavior in one culture may be impolite in another, so the ignorance of body language may lead to misunderstanding or even failure of communication.Besides learning verbal knowledge, foreign language learners need to foster their communicative competence, which is especially important during the process of intercultural communication. The knowledge and usage of one's body language may have some influence on his communicative competence. Therefore it is necessary for us to attach importance to the learning of body language. Compared to the regular university students, the vocational college students have the disadvantage of relatively poor English verbal knowledge, which makes them rely more on the help of body language in intercultural communication. In this case, how well have they grasped body language? Just for this reason, this thesis tries to find answers to the following questions in the forms of test and questions: How much do vocational students know of English body language? Whether can they behave correctly on intercultural occasions or not? Do students whose first major is English, know more of body language than students whose second major is English? Does learner's knowledge of English body language increase with the length of English learning, learner's age? Do the students who have passed CET-4 know more of body language than those who haven't?The subjects of this study were the students of three grades from Nantong Vocational College. Altogether 97 copies of the tests and questionnaires were sent out to the students involved, and 94 of them taken back. 3 of them were invalid for no answers or no marks in the required blanks such as age. The tentative study consisted of a test and a questionnaire. The test was mainly taken from Jin Yanli's Cross-Cultural Study of Body Language Use in EFL Learning of Chinese College Students (Jin Yanli, 2006) and modified on the basis of it. The questions of the questionnaire were taken partly from Wang Zhengya's social-cultural test (Wang Zhenya, 1994). From the findings of the study, we could see that the vocational college English majors knew little of body language. It was common for them to misunderstand the English body language. Therefore, the vocational college English majors are strongly recommended to improve their ability of body language in order to make a successful intercultural communication. This thesis tries to give some suggestions on the improvement of students 'body language competence.