A Study Of Intercultural Communication In Nonverbal

With the consistent opening-up of China and the development of trade, Chinese diplomacy starts to depend on cultural power. Meanwhile, as ways of communication between China and foreign countries vary, foreigners are more enthusiastic about learning Chinese. Nowadays, a large number of teachers of teaching Chinese as a second language choose to go abroad to introduce Chinese culture. At the same time, there are a lot of foreign students coming far away to China to learn and savor Chinese culture. These facts offers precious opportunities of teaching practice for the subject of teaching Chinese as a second language. It can be seen that intercultural communication is related to every behavior of cultural communication such as the communication between the teachers and the students and the students themselves.However, intercultural communication not only contains verbal communication but also includes non-verbal communication. Verbal communication is achieved by languages whereas non-verbal communication is conducted through non-verbal behaviors. Being an aiding method of cross-cultural communication, non-verbal communication is often neglected by the users. Nevertheless, it plays an irreplaceable role in cross-cultural communication as it has the function which cannot be realized by verbal communication in some cases.The main task of teaching Chinese as a foreign language is to cultivate the student’s ability of intercultural communication, which not only includes verbal communication ability but also non-verbal communication ability.Since non-verbal communication is influenced by factors such as history and culture for a long time, it is closely linked with ethical culture. It represents the ways different ethical groups think and express themselves. However sometimes native speakers tend to neglect the existence and function of non-verbal communication. Since international students come from different nations, their cultural backgrounds are different from the local people. Therefore, misunderstanding or sometimes, cultural conflicts, which result in incorrect understanding of the meaning of non-verbal communication happens quite easily. As a result, teachers of teaching Chinese as a second language should not only teach the learners basic linguistic knowledge but also develop their intercultural communication abilities, especially non-verbal communication abilities which are frequently neglected by them so as to help the students meet the needs of communication of the target language countries. Non-verbal Communication, which belongs to intercultural communication, will be introduced in the following sections. The first part is the introduction of the meanings of choosing this topic, and the present achievements have got. The second part is the key theory of non-verbal communication including the concept types and functions. The third part is the cases study of the Chinese teacher and foreign students make, which were collected by the author who sat in the class of the teaching Chinese as second language. The forth part is the present situation of teaching the non-verbal communication, and the recommendations and suggestions of helping Chinese teachers and students enhance the awareness and ability of intercultural communication. The fifth part is the conclusion of the thesis.