Research On A College English Teacher’s Nonverbal Communication Behavior In Classroom —A Case Study

In general, the way of human communication can be divided into two broad categories, verbal communication and nonverbal communication. To some extent, nonverbal communication such as gestures, eye contact, smiles has the effect of repeating, complementing, substituting, regulating, accenting and contradicting on verbal communication. Hence, as one of the ways of people’s daily communication, nonverbal communication plays an important role in the process of communication. Besides, teaching is an interactive process which teachers impart knowledge and students study knowledge. In the classroom teaching, teachers often use eye contacts, smiles, gestures and so forth, which thus affects students’ learning interests and learning effects. Clearly, teachers’ nonverbal communication behaviors count an important part in the classroom communication.This thesis mainly adopts the method of classroom observation with the classroom observation form, and it takes an excellent teacher, Mrs. Ji who is from College of Foreign Language Studies in Guangxi Normal University as a case study. It conducts four videos of the four classes which Mrs. Ji teaches and explores the college English teacher’s nonverbal communication behaviors in classroom respectively from body language, paralanguage, object language and environmental language. What’s more, it uses the method of questionnaire survey, and distributes the questionnaires to 112 students from four classes, which aims at exploring the types of nonverbal communication behaviors that are mostly used by the college English teacher in classroom and the influences of these various nonverbal communication behaviors on students’ English learning. With a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the college English teacher’s nonverbal communication behaviors in classroom, this thesis aims at providing constructive suggestions for the classroom teaching of college English.The research results first indicate the teacher uses various types of nonverbal communication behaviors in the English classroom. To be specific, eye contact, smiling, gesture, head nodding, posture and voice inflection are mostly used by the teacher. Though, leg movement, proxemics, time arrangement and seat arrangement are used occasionally. In addition, the teacher’s different nonverbal communication behaviors have different effects on students’ acquisition, students’ learning motivation, students’ participation in class, learning atmosphere, classroom management and the relationship between teacher and student. Some nonverbal communication behaviors have great effects on students’ English learning. For instance, the teacher’s head nodding always affects students’ learning motivation, and voice inflections often influence students’ learning motivation and participation. Meanwhile, the teacher’s smiles influence students’ learning atmosphere and the relationship between teacher and student mostly. The teacher’s eye contacts also affect the classroom management and the relationship between teacher and student greatly. Anyway, some nonverbal communication behaviors occasionally affect students’ learning acquisition. For example, leg movements. Besides, the thesis provides many implications for college English classroom teaching. First, teachers should learn and study more about nonverbal communication behavior. Second, teachers should learn to use nonverbal communication behavior to adjust the relationship between teacher and student, regulate the classroom management, harmonize the learning atmosphere and improve students’ learning motivation and participation. Finally, teachers should use more positive nonverbal communication behaviors than negative ones.