A Study On College Students’ Nonverbal Communicative Competence

Human communication has two forms:verbal and nonverbal. Nonverbal communication refers to all the communicative actions except verbal ones. Nonverbal communication is so important that it determines whether human interaction can be achieved successfully or not. Albert Mehrabian (1972) indicates that93%of meaning in a conversation is conveyed nonverbally. Even conservative figures suggest70%of meaning stems from nonverbal components (Dodd,2006). So to realize the importance of nonverbal communicative competence in communication across cultures has already become rather urgent. The development of intercultural communicative competence is an important part of foreign language teaching and learning. Bi Jiwan, for instance, claims that "The major goal of foreign language teaching is to develop students’ cross-cultural communicative competence, both verbal and nonverbal"(Bi,1999:160). This shows the important role nonverbal cues play in communication. However, under the current Chinese educational system, verbal competence still remains the objective of foreign language teaching and learning, with nonverbal elements not given due attention.The researches on nonverbal communication have drawn the attention from the circles of intercultural communication and college English teaching, and many scholars have begun to study this area and accomplished some delightful achievements. Some books on this subject and the related papers published by Chinese scholars have had a profound impact on our nonverbal communication researches. However, currently the domestic studies on nonverbal communication mainly focus on the level of intercultural communication. The discussions on the relationship between nonverbal communication and college English teaching are not systematic. And as a result, many teachers and students are not fully aware of the function and status of nonverbal communication in college English teaching classroom. Especially in Jilin province, less attention to students’nonverbal communicative competence was paid. As a result, there is a great necessity to make a research to study college students’nonverbal communicative competence to see whether the college students possess a satisfactory nonverbal communicative competence and to find the ways to improve their nonverbal communicative competence from the point of view of college students and college English teachers.With this purpose, therefore, the author conducted a survey on the nonverbal communicative competence of240college students of Jilin Province from Jilin University and Changchun University of Technology. In this thesis, the author proposed the following three research questions: 1. What is the present status of college students’ nonverbal communicative competence?2. Do the students who possess high level of English language competence necessarily possess high level of intercultural nonverbal communicative competence?3. Should the English classes serve as the best channels for English learners to acquire the knowledge of the intercultural nonverbal communication?Then the author made an empirical research to by means of questionnaires, language proficiency test and interviews with the analysis of college students’ verbal communicative competence, nonverbal communicative competence and language competence. After this, the author made the data analysis to the collected data. This survey shows the present situation of non-verbal communicative competence and existing problems lie in it. At last, some approached to improve college students’ nonverbal communicative competence are proposed. Learners should take the initiative to learn knowledge of intercultural nonverbal communication, to avoid the negative factors of foreign cultures and to develop their own nonverbal communicative competence with conscious. As for college English teaching, English teachers should cultivate college students’ nonverbal communicative competence with strong conscious when teaching intercultural knowledge. The author suggests dividing the approaches to improve students’ nonverbal communicative competence into two ways:the dominant approaches (a direct way) and the recessive ones (an indirect and dispersive way).To sum up, the development and improvement of students’ intercultural nonverbal communicative competence are the results of long studying in the whole English studying process which ranges from elementary school to college. Therefore, we should further study and explore the strategies concerning how to cultivate the students’ intercultural nonverbal communicative competence in the different stages of studying English for English learners. By doing this study, the author hopes that college students can make a better and better nonverbal communicative competence and the purpose of college English teaching-proposing students’intercultural communicative competence can be better fulfilled.