The Application of Teachers’ Body Language in English Teach(3)

(name of author) 3 American teaching or other counties‟ teaching. So, from now on, the use of body language in English teaching is worth studying for every English teacher.

ii. Importance of body language in English teaching

At the beginning of human beings‟ revolution, there is no verbal language in their daily communication. At that time, body language is a main way to express their asking, congratulation, greeting and so on. Up to now, human beings have evolved for thousands of years. The complete verbal language system has been finished, but body language still played an inevitable role in human communication. Classroom teaching is also a kind of communication. In English teaching, teachers‟ proper body language will make students relax and help to create an active classroom atmosphere. For instance, when a teacher explains a word or a phrase in English, the students cannot understand what the teacher means. They may lose the interest of learning English. But if the teachers use some body language when he find his students cannot follow him, then, the effect will be different. Body language could transform the abstract into the specific, and create a connection between strange letters and living things. It can improve students‟understanding and remembering. Hence body language is quite important for English teachers in English teaching. But, what is body language?

B. Definition of body language

i. History of body language

The study of nonverbal communication started from the World War II, but before the WWII, the influence and significance of Darwin‟s work The Expression of the Emotion in Man and Animals cannot be ignored in the field of modern nonverbal communication study. [3]The early researchers Ruesch & Kees (1956) and Galloway (1970) provided a simple version and pointed out that nonverbal communication is a way of communication without any words. To put it more specifically, nonverbal communication refers to the actions of behaviors, reflective or non-reflective, from part of the body or the whole body to communicate feelings with others (Fast, 1979). In the book Introduction to Kinesics, Birdwhistell (1970) invented the term “Kinesics” and provided the first chance to the systematic study of body movements. He regarded “Kinesics”as “the continuous muscular shifts”, which are characteristics of living physiological systems. “Those groupings of movements are of significance to the communicational process and thus to the interactional systems of a particular social groups” (Birdwhistell, 1970). The invention of the term “Kinesics” shows a huge step in the field of nonverbal communication research.[4]

However, the definition of body language is more complex than the previous studies. Bi Jiwan (1990)