摘 要

非言语行为不使用任何口头或书面语言来表达交流。长期以来，人们总是强调老师的教学用语和教学手段，所以非言语交际的研究并没有引起足够的重视。作为言语交流的重要补充形式，非言语行为在人际交往的过程中对表达难以言表的含义、思想和情感起着重要的作用。

本文分析了武汉某教育机构初中英语课堂中的非语言行为，并探讨其在英语教学中的重要作用。研究表明，它不仅直接影响教育和教学活动的效果，而且在塑造学生的情感和态度方面也发挥了微妙的作用。

本文分为六章。第一章介绍非言语行为的定义，以及心理学家对非言语行为和课堂非言语行为的重要数据理论。第二章简要介绍了非言语行为的分类，分为身体语言，空间关系和副语言三大类。第三章通过对武汉某教育机构中学英语课堂的实地考察，对中学英语课程中非言语行为的应用状况进行了详细描述，并发现存在的问题。第四章结合了中学生学习英语的特点和英语教学中非言语行为的特点，总结了非言语行为在中学英语教学中的重要意义。第五章针对如何在课堂上更好地应用非言语行为给出了建议。最后一章总结全文。

关键词：非言语行为；身体语言；中学英语教学

Abstract

Nonverbal communication is expressed without any oral or written words. For a long time, teachers' teaching expressions and teaching methods have always been emphasized, so that the study of nonverbal communication has not attracted enough attention. As an important supplemental form of verbal communication, nonverbal behavior plays an important role in the process of interpersonal communication by conveying the elusive meanings, thoughts and emotions which are difficult to express.

This paper analyzes the nonverbal behavior of junior middle school English teaching class in an educational institution in Wuhan, and explores its important role in English teaching. Research indicates, nonverbal behavior not only directly affects the effect of education and teaching activities, but also plays a subtle role in shaping students' emotions and attitudes.

The paper is divided into six chapters. The first chapter introduces the definition of nonverbal behavior, and the important data theory of psychologists on nonverbal behavior and classroom nonverbal behavior. The second chapter briefly introduces the classification of nonverbal behavior, which is divided into three categories: kinesics, proxemics and paralanguage. In the third chapter, through the field observation of a middle school English class of an educational institution in Wuhan, the application status of nonverbal behavior in middle school English course is described in detail, and the problems are found out. The fourth chapter combines the characteristics of middle school students' learning English and nonverbal behavior in English teaching, and summarizes its significance in middle school English teaching. The fifth chapter gives advice on how to apply nonverbal behavior better in class. The last chapter is the summary of the paper.

Key Words: nonverbal behavior; body language; middle school English teaching

Contents

1 Introduction

1.1 The status of nonverbal communication

1.2 The status of class nonverbal communication

2 The Classification of Nonverbal Communication

2.1 Kinesics

2.2 Proxemics

2.3 Paralanguage

3 Current Application of Nonverbal Behavior in Middle School English Class

3.1 Kinesics

3.1.1 Posture action

3.1.2 Facial expressions

3.1.3 Gestures

3.1.4 Eye contact

3.1.5 Physical demonstration

3.2 Proxemics

3.2.1 Seat layout

3.2.2 Interpersonal distance

3.3 Paralanguage

3.3.1 Tone of voice

3.3.2 Speech speed

4 Features of Nonverbal Communication in Middle School

4.1 Features of middle school English class

4.2 Features of nonverbal communication

4.2.1 Unconsciousness

4.2.2 Trustworthiness

4.2.3 Personalization

4.3 Function and importance of nonverbal communication

4.3.1 Information transfer

4.3.2 Atmosphere control

4.3.3 Speech enhancement

4.3.4 Feelings exchange

5 Recommendations

6 Conclusions

References

Acknowledgements

Exploration and Application of Nonverbal Communication in Middle School English Language Teaching

1 Introduction

1.1 The status of nonverbal communication

Nonverbal communication is expressed without any oral or written words. Referring to the process of exchanging information through the body movements, tone of voice, and physical distance, it is relative to verbal communication. Complicated and unintentional, nonverbal communication is a kind of behavior appearing all the time in our daily life, but is easily to be ignored. According to Mehrabian, professor of psychology in UCLA, there are three elements highlighting the role in face-to-face communication, and the three elements' proportions are different in people's given messages for expressing their likings: oral words takes up 7%, tone of voice accounts for 38%, and body language occupies 55%. Though the rule of Mehrabian only applies to people’s face-to-face feeling communication, actually nonverbal communication not only plays its role in the face-to-face activity of conveying information for feeling. As Birdwhistell (1970) maintained, that" no more than 30 to 35 percent of the social meaning of a conversation or an interaction are carried by the words." No matter how the data are formed, the significance of nonverbal behavior in social communication can be manifested at least. In addition to this, Ross (1974) also claimed that, based on the results of the experiment, speech messages convey only 35 percent of the total communicative activity, and the rest are nonverbal behavior expressed.

It is possible that the early data from scientist or professor are not convincing enough. Here an obvious example can prove this directly. Alike, released in November 2015 (Spain), directed by Rafa Cano Mendez and Daniel Martinez Lara, is a nonverbal short film. In this film of seven minutes, there are no words or dialogs at all, but 117 awards nominations were won, 64 awards were gained finally. People can only understand the meaning and get inspired from its visual expressions, such as the character’s facial expression, body movement, and the change of the environment and music rhythm. Undoubtedly, the film crossed the cultural and linguistic boundaries by sharing the value pursuit and spiritual resonance with flying colors. It makes sense that communication not totally relies on spoken or written languages. Nonverbal expression can also undertake the information conveyance function independently. These all indicated that although speech acts are the main carrier of various contents. Nonverbal behavior should not be ignored easily, for it is also an indispensable part in daily communication

1.2 The status of class nonverbal communication

It is well known that the process of communication between teachers and students in classroom teaching is basically through verbal and nonverbal behavior interaction. Teachers may think that they taught in verbal language, however actually, they have delivered more information by nonverbal communication. Like Zhou Junying said “From the teacher's entry into the classroom, all participants in the classroom use nonverbal acts for timely and effective communication.” Whether we have realized it or not, each of us will spend a lot of time analyzing the nonverbal language. Since every movement has its own signal and meaning, in fact, before the teacher opening his mouth, they have already finished a series of exchanges.

Patrick W. Miller claimed in his nonverbal communication that 88% of the classroom information was conveyed by nonverbal communication channels, and only 12% of the information was communicated by verbal communication. Although it sounds unreliable, since in our usual impression, teachers kept saying when teaching knowledge in the classroom. Admittedly, nonverbal communication is often overlooked for a long time. The famous Scottish linguist David T. Abercrombie stated that human spoke with the organ of sound, but they talked with the whole body. That is to say, people’s communication is inseparable from their body language. According to Alexia Georgakopoulos and Laura K. Guerrero's investigation report for students' perceptions of the best and the worst teachers' verbal and nonverbal behavior in six countries, students thought that the best teachers had more excellent expressiveness, and relaxed movement than the worst teachers.

2 The Classification of Nonverbal Communication

When defining and classifying the phrase nonverbal communication, there isn't a uniform result under the distinction of different perspectives and views. However, it is widely accepted that people in the subconscious or deliberate sense, can convey thousands of emotional information with a series of body language. So here, taking a common classification as an example, kinesics, proxemics and paralanguage, are summarized as nonverbal communication elements, respectively, as follows:

2.1 Kinesics

Kinesics includes body movements, postures, gestures, facial expression, eye contact and physical display. This kind of nonverbal behavior can be used both in conjunction with words and alone. It is of great importance in the process of communication between teachers and students, especially in the process of passing emotions and feelings.

2.2 Proxemics

Proxemics involves classroom seating arrangements, teacher's moving position and interpersonal distance. Interpersonal distance can be used to assess the degree of interpersonal relationship. To be specific, people always choose their distance between each other basing on their personal feelings of others. In general, interpersonal distance can potentially express the emotive qualities of people, so close interpersonal distance means a deeper emotional effect.

2.3 Paralanguage

Paralanguage means human's pronunciation features such as the volume, tone, sound, rhythm and silence. It is not the words of words itself, but is often utilized to assist the expression of words in order to express the meaning and the emotions more explicitly. On the other hand, the same sentence expressed in different tones, volumes or rhythms, can have different meanings, and can achieve different communication effects. For this reason, it is the way people said, not the content, that really counts in daily communication.

3 Current Application of Nonverbal Behavior in Middle School English Class

It is known that the most appropriate approach in this study is to conduct a classroom observation and take detailed notes and analyses based on observed nonverbal communication between teachers and students. Three junior middle school English classes at an English training institution in Wuhan have been observed. Each class has 120 minutes of classroom interaction between teachers and students. The participants in this study included three junior middle school English teachers and 25 students for each class.

3.1 Kinesics

3.1.1 Posture action

Teacher's posture action can reflect his mental states and spiritual outlook. It can be said without exaggeration that every movement of teachers' is a model of students, so that every step of teaching cannot be viewed lightly. It is found from the spot observation that the English teacher of the training institutions were relatively young and dynamic, and their lectures were so interesting that the English classroom emphasizes kept relaxing and active, which was in line with today's educational requirement. If the teacher was too obedient to the traditional dignity, or too cautious and serious, it is bound to lead to a depressed classroom atmosphere. Thus students' thinking ability may be limited, and they may be afraid of making mistakes. Under such circumstance, they may fear to speak or discuss, and turn to take a securer way such as recording notes instead of taking participants in the classroom interaction.

3.1.2 Facial expressions

Generally speaking, students can easily capture information from the teacher's facial expressions since facial expressions are usually faster, richer and truer than words. The English teacher being observed frequently used facial expression to attract students' attention, such as using smile in the classroom to pass on positive attitude and to encourage students to speak bravely; using frown to imply students to continue thinking; using wrinkled nose to remind students to take carefully attention to the details; using eyes wide open to remind distracted students to focus.

Not only teachers in the classroom use facial expressions to convey information, students also use the same way to pass information to the teachers, especially in the English class. In the observed English class, when finishing the text study, the teacher invited a female student to repeat the text, it is obvious that the student had a pained look. The student just stood up and looked embarrassed, turned red in her face, and did not dare to try to answer, only head down looking at the desktop. At this time the teacher just stared at her, and his expression was filled with puzzle. Soon the student raised her head in frowned, and she used eye contact to express her predicament to the teacher. Although there was no language at all, through the facial expression she sent a signal of help to the teacher. The teacher quickly got her situation, then stretched his eyebrow and gave her some tips with smile. With the help of the teacher finally the student completed the text retelling. From this case it is clear that English is a communication class, many times because of the limited English ability, students can not express their plight by words timely. Under such circumstance, teachers should always pay attention to the students’ facial expressions, and try to judge the mastery of knowledge through their expressions. At the same time teachers should pay attention to their own facial expressions, and use facial expressions to communicate better with students.

3.1.3 Gestures

The gestures the observed teacher often used are: showing with hand to imitate the shape or size of something; pointing one forefinger to the other hand palm to signal stop; putting forefinger on the middle of the lips to signal quiet; raising his arms meanwhile palming up to signal stand up. When expressing numbers, directions, and instructions, gestures are often more time-saving and visual than words, as it can act as implied hints. For instance, when a student had a wrong answer, a certain gesture can prompt the student to proceed to the right direction and avoid interrupting the student's speaking, meanwhile reducing the embarrassment of making mistakes and protecting his self-esteem and self-confidence. In addition, teacher's gestures can also avoid the repetition and vapidity of speech. For instance, accustomed to “good”, “excellent”, “perfect”, occasional silence plus a thumb up will have a better effect in giving students a positive response, so as to enhance their impression of knowledge points. In order to increase the teaching effect, these actions sometimes should be accompanied by oral English, since the combination of visual and audio helps to stimulate minds racing.

3.1.4 Eye contact

Eyes contact as one of the most effective nonverbal acts in the classroom teaching process, fully deserves the most accurate and interactive kinesics. Owing to its unique sensitivity, any subtle change can hardly escape from the eyes gaze. Eye contact is actually the exchange of feelings, ideas and information with each other. Teachers can contact through the eyes to answer doubts, express encouragement and appreciation, or use eye contact to remind and stop students. Dr. Eckhart Hess of the University of Chicago believes that sincere enthusiasm and real interest can be revealed from the eyes. However, under normal conditions of a large number of classroom students and heavy course task, teachers always look around too much, and look to focus too little. In this case, it is sometimes difficult to take care of the individual's emotional needs. Also in the classroom observation, it is found that the teachers' individual attention to the students was not equal, and they had a tendency to give much more attention to some specific students and ignored the others. In fact, this casual eye contact can be easily perceived by the sensitive students, and will hurt them emotionally, leading to the decline of their enthusiasm in the classroom.

3.1.5 Physical demonstration

When teaching new vocabulary, it is a generous method to use pictures to display the meaning of the vocabulary for English teachers. Pictures are not a kind of verbal language but are quite useful to mobilize the students' senses, and raise their curiosity. The visualization of the content has a significant effect in enhancing student’s lexical meaning cognition and promoting their vocabulary memorization. The physical demonstration is better than the direct interpretation in Chinese or English, for time-saving and effort reasons.

3.2 Proxemics

3.2.1 Seat layout

It is observed that the classroom in the above-mentioned institution is much smaller than the regular school, but the seat layout is just the same as traditional front and rear arrangement, except no platform. The teachers stand in front of the students showing power point and writing blackboard. Each student has a desk mate so that they can discuss problems and complete pairs practice. Besides this kind of classroom arrangement, the contemporary English training institutions also have semi-circular salon classrooms, as well as modular seating discussion classroom (students are divided into several groups to discuss and learn). Traditional front and rear arrangement of seats in fact reflects the different status of teachers and students, as well as teacher-student relationship. This form of arrangement, to a certain extent, will suppress the operational thinking of students. So teachers can only rely on free movement, and changing the distance of students in order to attract students' attention, and stimulate their zeal for learning.

3.2.2 Interpersonal distance

Interpersonal distance represents one of the factors that affect the classroom atmosphere and education effect. The teachers being observed tend to choose the standing position which can fully display themselves, and easily do the actions, ensuring every student can see the teachers clearly. Additionally, the teacher keeps walking around in the classroom, for the sake of catching students' feelings and attitudes, and avoiding boring and monotonous class atmosphere. Nevertheless, as a matter of fact, students still feel a certain pressure from the teachers giving lessons, especially when the teachers are drawing closer to them. Near distance makes the students afraid to ask or answer questions. The reason is that the students prefer to agree that the teacher is more like a supervisor rather than a helper in class, so the closer the distance is, the stronger the alertness will obtain. However, it doesn't mean that the close distance between teachers and students is inadvisable. When the students are answering the questions, teacher's close will increase the students' sense of security, as they believe that the teacher will help them by providing some tips, and won't let them feel embarrassed even if they can't answer. Similar to the unequal individual attention, the fact of separate treatment also can be found in interpersonal distance. For the front and side seat students, and the top students, the teachers prone to implement more body touch or close distance. But such silent performance is like a voiced language, irritating the back seat students voicelessly, impressing them with an unethical bias, which is certainly destructive to the establishment of a good teacher-student relationship.

3.3 Paralanguage

3.3.1 Tone of voice

It is clear that the tone of English is more exaggerated than Chinese. When speaking English, people are inclined to be more emotional, and change more in sound and rhythm. In order to assist students to establish a good sense of English in the course, English teachers often need to accurately grasp the tone of English, whether British or American English. Standard pronunciation and intonation are an indispensable basic qualification for English teachers. Because in the language teaching process, English teachers should fully demonstrate the natural flow and beauty of a foreign language so as to keep students' interests in learning English. The observed English teachers in the institution always use the sound changes to emphasize the focus, such as improving the sound, or slowing down, both of them can quickly grasp the attention of students. It is safe to guess that when suddenly reduce the volume, or simply silence, will also have this effect attracting students to listen carefully.

3.3.2 Speech speed

Beyond that, the teachers change the speed of the lectures frequently. Specifically, when talking about the contents of simple level, the teachers speed up to save time and avoid procrastination. Since inattention or short attention spans are the prominent characteristics of all the middle school students, speeding up is also useful to prevent distraction of students. When comes to the difficult part, the teachers slow down to ensure that every student can keep pace with the progress. However, it is well known that the English vocabulary is not monosyllabic pronunciation, so too slow speed will dislocate the syllable, which is not conducive to students’ language learning and mastery.

4 Features of Nonverbal Communication in Middle School

4.1 Features of middle school English class

Xu Jieting: “From the psychological point of view, the characteristics of middle school students’ thinking is image-based thinking, thus they are more sensitive to the image and specific nonverbal teaching behavior, especially for some indescribable substance or details. Nonverbal teaching behavior often has a greater fascination in supplementing or expressing the meaning of the verbal words.” For middle school students, listening, speaking, reading and writing share the largest proportion of English classroom tasks. Under the examination-oriented education system, students only concentrate on practicing the examination questions, and seldom add the relative background knowledge, such single purpose of high-intensity learning is their typical study mode. For middle school English teachers, interpretation of words and grammar is the most important part of their teaching content, which needs students to memorize a lot of knowledge and to understand the complicated questions. Using verbal language to describe all is nowhere near enough, since it is probably hard to achieve the teaching effect of impressing the students.