| In fact, this article consists of two parts. The first argues for a revival of interest to the importance of non-verbal communication and the second, a practical one, gives sample activities to show what can be done in class to develop non-verbal communication skills.
Although it is obvious that non-verbal communication is important, I’ll give you some evidence of it. The first is that the non-verbal aspect of speech uses the visual informational channel through which our brain receives more than 80% of all information. Secondly, the body language is the only one we are not taught at school; every human is given the ability to use gestures by birth. The only things we have to learn are the meanings of particular gestures in a verbal language, the one we use to speak and think in. The third evidence is the fact that there are hundreds of languages and millions of dialects of “verbal” languages, but people in all countries use the same movements of the body, they are just given different meanings in different cultures. But there are some that are basic and have the same meaning in all cultures, e.g., when you point a finger at yourself it means “I”. Finally, ancient people communicated using only gestures. That was the only language they knew. That, and not only that, makes a non-verbal language an important part of our lives.
In the second part we will focus not on the body language itself, but on the interpretation of it in different cultures to make the process of language and culture acquisition more interesting and more effective. Here I offer a series of activities with detailed description that to my point of view should be used as a part of English classes.
“In the middle of nowhere”.This is a role game of situations. I called it that way because the places, persons and names could vary depending on class topics. The game follows one story line: A Russian tourist accidentally got on the wrong plane (train, bus, or any transport) and after he (she) arrived at the place of his destination, he found himself in the middle of nowhere, i.e. he doesn’t know where he is. He knows only Russian and some 3-5 basic words in English, but that doesn’t help, because no one in that place understands Russian. It could be any country. The object of the game is to find a way to the Russian embassy by completing a series of tasks using only gestures and primitive English words, as if it were a real situation.
The game is played in pairs. The teacher prepares a series of situations according to the number of students in the group (or equal to the number of pairs). In each situation, there are two roles: one is always a Russian tourist, and the other roles change as the story goes on. Those roles may include anyone from an ordinary passer-by or a police officer, to a crazy taxi driver or a 97-year-old woman suffering from amnesia. The situations, roles and objects for each role are written on cards so only the people who play it can see the task. The rest of the group have to guess what the situation is about and what are the meanings of gestures used by the players.
One of the requirements of the game is that the situations should reflect the culture of the country the Russian tourist has come to. As an option (depending on the level of students) cultural peculiarities of gesture interpretation could be added to the situations, to make it even more real.
One of the requirements of the game is that the situations should reflect the culture of the country the Russian tourist has come to. As an option (depending on the level of students) cultural peculiarities of gesture interpretation could be added to the situations, to make it even more real.
As an experiment, I conducted that game in a group of first year pre-intermediate students of English. They didn’t have any problems in playing, but the discussion that followed the game caused some trouble as because of the limited number of words that are to be used to describe and explain gestures. Therefore, it may be a good idea to pre-teach such words to students before playing the game.
“The blue cow” This is a famous children’s game, which I believe everyone has ever played. The rules are as follows: one person is given a word or a sentence to be shown to the group without saying any words, i.e. using only gestures. The students of a group have to guess the word or phrase. The one who makes right guess first becomes an odd man out.
If the game is played in English it gives several benefits: first, it improves public performance skills and use of gestures. Second, since associations are widely used in this game, it enlarges synonyms vocabulary and makes it easier to memorize groups of words. Third, it enlarges descriptive vocabulary.
Although the game can be adapted to any level from pre-intermediate upwards by making the tasks easier, the experiment has shown that pre-intermediate students due to their limited vocabulary cannot perform well and that takes fun away from the game and makes it boring for them. In a class of upper-intermediate students, however, the game was played with great interest and involvement. So I recommend using this game in classes of an intermediate level and above. Again, the best way to prepare students for such a game is to pre-teach the necessary vocabulary.
The game can be played either as a warm up activity at the beginning of the lesson, or as a game for a whole class.
Video activity. The teacher prepares a short (1-2 minute) extract of some video with a lot of gestures involved (soap operas are believed to be a good source of emotive encounters but I decided on “Overboard”). A script of the scene should be prepared as well.
The second step is “listening to the video”, i.e. the screen is covered with something and students have to listen to the conversation on the video tape. After that, they are given a comprehension test. It should be remembered that students do not have access to the tape script at this stage.
The next step is to give students the scripts and let them listen to and watch the video clip.
After that show the video without the sound - watch only - and ask students to look closely at the postures, facial expressions, hand movements and the distance between the two protagonists. Half of the group can be asked to observe one person and the other half another. From a processing point of view, it is better to focus on the picture only at this stage and not occupy attention with processing sound.
This follows by a brief summary of what the two halves of the group reported in the workshop.
Finally, ask the students to draw some sort of conclusion about the situation and compare this with the answers they wrote to the questions when they were listening only.
This is the whole point of the exercise: communication is clearly made up of verbal and non-verbal channels and very often in conversation it is the latter that provides the most important clues to understanding. In this case, the non-verbal information provides the basis for a much deeper, more meaningful insight into the conversation.
The benefit of such activities is quite obvious. Moreover, in ‘A gesture paints a thousand words’, Tony Harris takes the argument a step further: he outlines the objectives of the whole activity that we can’t but mention in our article:
* Seeing a conversation very often provides some of the most critical clues for a more complete understanding of face-to-face encounters.
* Focusing exclusively on the verbal aspects of speech (emphasis on listening and speaking) is a misrepresentation of reality which may a) divert attention away from non-verbal features that carry potentially important information and b) encourage inappropriate learner strategies to deal with listening texts.
* The implication of this for teachers is to encourage the type of video exercise, which promotes non-verbal strategies for interpreting listening texts.
* Gestures enhance and substitute for words, and sometimes remove the necessity for them altogether... [1. P. 32]
You can also experiment with this activity as I did and turn it the other way: let students watch it without the sound and then ask them to explain what was happening on the screen and then turn on the sound and compare the amount of information received from the two channels (watching and listening). In the case of my experiment with the upper-intermediate students they reported about 85-90% of the story after watching without sound, and after watching the full version they got the information about the names of the heroes and some details about their lives. Again, this task proves that non-verbal communication is very important not only in everyday life, but also in foreign language acquisition.
Gesture interpretation. Another good activity to study gestures and words is making a table of interpretations of common gestures in the English and Russian culture. At each lesson one of the students is to make a five-minute report to the class introducing a gesture with all its possible meanings in English and Russian. This is followed by a discussion and completion of a table of gesture meanings. Next time another student introduces another gesture, and so on.
The whole activity with a discussion takes 10-20 minutes depending on students’ interest. The comparative table that is built this way helps to enlarge vocabulary and understand better some cultural peculiarities.
Act show.It is a modification of a traditional talk show, i.e. students not only talk when they express their opinions at the show, but also stand up and act (maybe even in costumes) their role as if it was a real TV show. It is a good way to improve speaking skills in combination with the usage of gestures to add some emotional coloring to the speech. It improves public performance and artistic skills of students, but it also requires the participants, and especially the presenter, to have those skills in order to be able to play. Moreover, the show needs some time to prepare. I recommend it for students of upper-intermediate and higher levels.
The best way to get maximum of it is to videotape the whole show and then analyze the language, gestures and overall behavior of every participant, giving suggestions of what should and what should not be done. This show can be set up as a real one, i.e. you can invite other students and teachers to it as guests who can also say something and ask questions. And students of the study group (who prepared the show) are main heroes of the show.
In conclusion I’d like to say that all these activities can be used in different combinations with each other and may be changed in any way to fit the language teaching conditions (the topic, the level of the group, etc.). You can even develop your own materials based on the principles described in this article. Let’s sum them up.
After establishing the notion that gestures play a part in communication, we have come up with an idea to build up on this heightened awareness by showing that non-verbal communication not only exists but often provides the most important visual clues to understanding what the speaker says. Likewise, the non-verbal aspects of communication can help us to understand the culture itself. Apart from anything else, the series of classroom activities with gestures like the ones offered in the article are really good fun.
Литература
1. Tony Harris. A gesture paints a thousand words. The importance of non-verbal communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. – Volume II, Number I, pp.28-32.
Научный руководитель – Ястребова Л.Н.,
ст. преподаватель ИЯК ТПУ |
