Body language in English Teaching

任竞竞

Abstract: In this article, the characteristics and functions of body language are expounded, emphasizing that the proper use of body language in English teaching, including facial expression, guestures and body distance. They can enrich the content of English teaching, diversify teaching method and add vividness to the teaching to achieve better results .

Key words: body language;communicate;function;English teaching

中图分类号: H319文献标识码: A文章编号:1672-1578(2009)11-0014-01

1 Introduction

Human body language, including gestures and facial expressions, is used to communicate in countless subtle and complex ways. In the communication between teachers and students, nonverbal communication is more important than verbal one. Body language of both teachers and students plays its active role in teaching. Teachers need to work hard to captivate and sustain the attention of students in order to engage students. Students are often more attentive to what teachers do than to what they say.

2 Functions of Body Language in English Teaching

2.1 Stimulate the Interest

The strong study interest is the prime motive power of learning activity,it can stimulate and raise student's study interest,therefore before each class, we should make good preparation so that expect the student can have the strong interest through a series of body language. For example,teach “What are you doing?”, you can design the following body language to the text content: let the student make writing, or dancing together with you,students do the body language with teacher, listen and do warm up in the activities to enter the study condition,then it has made the natural upholstery for the new class and stimulated stusents study interest greatly.

2.2 Enhance the Study Effect

Body language is one of rich expressive languages in the teaching language, especially in English teaching, using the suitable body language not only can avoid using Chinese to explain English,but can promote the teachers and students to communicate, enhance the teaching efficiency.

2.2.1 Digital teaching with the body language

In elementary school, English number teaching mainly is

1-20 ,which can be used frequently. In digital teaching, if the teacher carries on the machinery drill constantly, the student feels dull, then the goal can not be achieved and study English interest will be reduced. We can use the body language in the digital teaching as follows: at first, we can read number1-10 showing our hands at the same time. For example,“three” we can stretch out three fingers.Then the student think it is interesting and imitate immidiatly, while the teacher teach the student to say and correct the individual who show the wrong hand. Then let the student listen to the order, make the hand signal, have time freely to practice. In this way, the student will feel interesting and the teaching effect will be very good.

2.2.2 Vocabulary teaching with the body language

There are many words which can be drawn out by the movement in the elementary English books. Like verb “sing, dance, sleep, walk”; noun “bird, tiger, duck, cat, dog”; adjective “long--short, thin--fat, big—small” and so on. All may be taught by the proper movement directly. Sometimes the teacher also can exaggerate them to let the students feel interested. In this way, the teaching effect will be improved.

2.3 Strengthen the Practice Effect

The psychology research tells us, the student working with the full brain can stimulate student's cerebral cortex and then the content is not easy to be forgotten. Therefore, reviewing and reinforcing in the teaching, you can design some practices frequently with the body language, helping the student to consolidate content and arise interest. Teaching many kinds of occupations, let the student look your body language, guess “What am I?” you read, the student says “You are reading.” Such other practice, guess the word according to the shape of the mouth and so on. So long as the teacher designs attentively, consolidates practices through the body language, certainly can enhance the teaching efficiency.

3 Conclusion

Body language has the extremely vital role in the foreign language teaching. It is not only helpful to strengthen the correlation between teachers and students but also can raise student's human relations ability and the language application ability. So each English teacher must learn to use the body language teaching way, try to teach in English from the beginning to the end in class, together with the corresponding body language so that the students' ability of English will be certainly and greatly improved.

Bibliography:

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[3]Wu Zongjie.Readings for Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching[M].Zhejiang Teachers' University, 1998.

[4]Gu Xueliang.The Basic Technical Training in English Teaching[M].Hangzhou University Press, 1998.