Effects Of An English Teacher's Nonverbal Behavior In Primary School Classroom

English teaching and learning are a series of communicative processes between instructors and students. Wiemann states "Effective teaching requires effective communication." (1975: 54). In the classroom, we not only teach the students knowledge through our verbal behaviors but also convey messages of our expectations, attitudes and feelings to students through our various nonverbal behaviors. The "silent language" has a significant effect on teaching. But the questions are: 1) To what degree do the English teachers in primary school serve the functions of their nonverbal behaviors? 2) Are the English teachers' nonverbal behaviors subject to systematic modification?In order to study these questions, the author conducted a research from March to July of 2006 in English classroom of Primary School Attached to Xiangnan University on the basis of correlational studies of Cooper's (1998) and Rosenthal and Jacobson's (1968). It provided systematic, experimental evidence indicating that improvement of the teachers' nonverbal behaviors will subsequently improve primary school English teaching which varied in three measures: students' cognitive and effective learning, teacher/student relationship and students' participation in class. Specifically, two teachers gave lessons three times during the investigation and their lessons were videotaped. Two questionnaires, classroom observations and interviews were conducted with the teachers and students. Having been provided with the feedback from the students and the video, the teachers developed a variety of strategies to improve their nonverbal behaviors. As individual teachers modified their nonverbal behaviors, students' perception of the teachers and evaluation of the effectiveness of the teachers' nonverbal behaviors improved.The author made a horizontal and longitudinal comparative analysis by using tables and figures. The results indicated that the teachers' nonverbal behaviors in the classroom had a great effect on English teaching of primary school. Improvement of the teacher's nonverbal behaviors will subsequently improve the relationship between the teacher and students, increase the students' participation in class, enhance the students' cognitive and effective learning and hence improve English teaching. This discovery was in confirmative with Cooper's theory about the functions of nonverbal behaviors performed in the classroom and Rosenthal and Jacobson's "Pygmalion effects" in the classroom.This research was limited to one school and a small group of students. Besides, only some of the categories were involved in this study. Nevertheless, this study attaches attention to the nonverbal effectiveness of English teachers on teaching and contributes to a small but growing body of research on nonverbal communication and English teaching. It paved a new way for further study in the field of nonverbal communication of English teaching.