An Analysis of Body Language in Primary School English Teaching.doc

An Analysis of Body Language in Primary School English Teaching1 IntroductionAs everybody knows, the classroom teaching is one of the most important ways that the students learn English. As far as the English teaching is concerned, teachers have to arouse the students interest so that they may learn better. There are many ways to arouse the students interest and help them to learn better, body language used in English teaching is one of them.Body language is an important media through which people communicate with each other. It refers to the patterns of facial expressions, gesture, eye contact and body distance that people use to express their feelings in communication. In school education, body language plays a positive role in cultivating the students characters. Teachers are usually respected, and factually, what or how the teachers say and do will be possibly imitated by the students (sometimes subconsciously). In a word, teachers graceful body language helps to improve the students artistic-appreciation and moral character. If the students develop a wonderful body language, which will possibly lead them to form optimistic and active feelings, they will surely have a more smooth interpersonal relation. The affection of teachers body language on the students is reflected not only by establishing a good example, but also shortening the teacher-student estrangement by which a more harmonious studying atmosphere is created. As a matter of fact, teachers friendly appearance can greatly encourage the students studying enthusiasmFurther more, the characteristics of theory and abstraction of knowledge also requires the vivid, dramatic and accessible gestures to make it specific and figurative. As a result, the students interest is motivated and the effect of teaching is greatly improved.2 Body Language 2.1 The origin of body languageBody language may date back to Aristotle, who had studied the expressions of actions. And Darwins Expressions of Humans and Animals published in 1872 can be regarded as the initial study of body language, in which it was mentioned as part of human activities from the very beginning of the primitive society. However, the public knew little about it and did not study it systematically and scientifically. The publication of Ray L Birdwhistells An Introduction to Kineics in 1952 marked the birth of this new science. Dr. Edward. T. Halls The Silent Language in 1959 and Julius Fasts Body Language in 1973 made people know more about this new area and gradually accepted it. The first one is Rinesics Theory, which is related to the special distance between human interaction and the last is Self-intimacy Theory, which concerns the nature of human and any other animal of being touched, and if inhibited; it will be released by self-intimacy. During the 20th century scientists paid an increasing attention to this newly explored field. A bulk of empirical studies have been explored into the specifics of body language, such as general , positive and negative and orientationangle of orientation, adjacent versus across; touch; movement and position; voice; etc. Prominent body movement researchers include F. Baos, E. Sapir, W. Labarre, E. Coffman, A. E. Sheflen, Paul Ekman, Wallace Friesen, Albert Scheflen, and Albert Mehrabian. 1Fifty years ago, the linguist and educator Chen Wangdao pointed out that language is a means to send and receive information, including voice, wording and kinesics. He was the first one who made a clear distinction of body language and some other means of message transferring in China. In the late 1980s, two monographs, one is An Introduction to Body Language (1988) by Ge Erling and the other is motion linguistics (1988) by Zhuangjiyu mark the beginning of the study in this area in China(高，1994). But the majority of the publications on this area are translated from other languages. Some known Chinese scholars have a special interest in body language, such as Hu Wenzhong, Liu Wenrong, and Jin Fu, who have translated many works of body language from foreign language into Chinese2.But what is body language? There is really no quick answer to this question.2.2 Definition of body language The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English defines body language as “the process of communicating through conscious or unconscious gestures and poses” (P.143).The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Dictionary takes body language as “the bodily gestures, postures, and facial expressions by which a person communicates nonverbally with others” (p.211), Cambridge Learners Dictionary gives the definition of body language as “the way you move your body, that shows people what you are feeling” (p.75). And Edward T. Hall(1981) names this kind of language as silent language, who argues that time talks, space talks, physical settings also talk, and ones culture even the pitch of ones voice, tempo and intonation can tell people something. Early in the 1905s, anthropologist Ray L Birdwhistell, a pioneer investigator in this field, coined the term “kinesics” to refer to the study of body language. “Kineics” encompasses the study of all body movement of communicative value to facial expression, posture, leanings, muscular tensions, body shifts, head nods, and other small and large body movements. Samovar, Porter Stefani propose that body language involves all those nonverbal stimuli in a communication setting that are generated by both the source and his or her use of the environment and that has potential message value for the source or receiver3.From the above, its not difficult for us to understand why there are so many different terms referring to the same conception：body language, nonverbal language, silent language, sign language, paralanguage, body talk, kinesics and so on. Each of them focuses on some or more aspects of it. But we can get the essential characteristics of this language as the follows: Its a means of communicating ideas and feelings. Its nonverbal and employs no words, but includes the manners of how words are said. It reaches its communicative purpose not only through the bodily function itself such as facial expressions, gestures, postures, but including the objects and settings round (proxemics), signs, time messages and so on. It employs not only ears but mainly eyes and other senses as well. It involves both the sender and the receiver consciously or unconsciously. 43 Primary Students Psychology in ClassroomPsychology thinks the attention is the psychological activities that focus on certain objects, certain things under a clear state of consciousness, when people have a high degree of attention, they will respond to this matter more quickly, more clearly, more deeply, and more durable. One educator said: "Attention is the only gateway to the soul, all consciousness can not come unless through it." Only those information entering the state can be known, and become an individual experience through further processing. its objectives, scope and duration depends on the characteristics of external stimuli and subjective factors. It is difficult to focus on a certain learning object If students are distracted or absent-minded, so the student will not understand what teacher said and wrote, and then they can not have a good perception and understanding of materials, making teaching duplication of efforts. Therefore, we should take various effective ways to nurture the students attention, efforts to improve teaching effectiveness in the teaching process.3.1 Students anxiety in English classroomEnglish learning begins to catch more and more attention in China, a younger age trend is gradually become obvious, and in some areas and schools, English learning has become an important indicator for elementary school children who come into the secondary school, and included in the evaluation system of school education quality. however, for Chinese children whose mother tongue is still in the developing stage, a new language of learning that completely different from the native system will bring some pressure and difficulties on them , Numerous studies show that foreign language beginners make higher levels on anxiety, and will lead to the greater negative impact on learning in the future5. And research has shown that learning anxiety of native Chinese children may be higher than in other languages. Such as their level of anxiety is higher when learning Japanese than others whose language are another language. 3.2 The effect of teachers teaching behavior in classroomChildren in different learning environments have different levels of anxiety, and there are significant individual differences prove anxiety is generate by the external environment and individual factors. And learning English as a mother tongue different from English as second language learning, it is doing in the system of school education and under the teacher guidance of classroom teaching, teacher behavior and classroom climate will become the main factors on influencing the emotional attitude of children. Ewald ask native Spanish-speaking English learners to report what is an important impact factor on their English learning, the report found that 89% of the students think that the teacher's language and behavior has important influence on their study. 6Some researchers found that teachers positive body language can make positive effect on helping primary school children to cultivate a significant interest. But negative emotional behavior of teachers has significantly negative effect on primary school children's learning interests, the teachers education behavior related to teacher evaluation, encouragement and help to children, as well as communication and attention and so on. Studies indicate that teachers negative evaluation will increase the anxiety level of students on foreign language learning. Horwitz research shows that teachers positive emotional support can make students interested in foreign language learning, so as to enhance foreign language learning achievement. Fan (2008) study also found that teachers encourage cooperating with each other. Students can be divided into two groups consist of boys and girls that create non-threatening learning environment which can effectively reduce the anxiety of students.4 Body Language in English TeachingThe study on body language both at home and abroad focuses mainly on human interaction, especially on public speech and inarticulate persons. In fact, body language also plays an important role in classroom teaching. Many teachers and educators have explored a lot into the body language in classroom. 4.1 The significance of body language in classroom 4.1.1 Using body language to create a comfortable learning environmentEducational psychology research shows that emotion impact students intellectual development and play in the learning process; Teachers behavior constricts the change of Students mood in the classroom; Teachers face, eyes, posture, gestures invariably affect mood and attitude of students, and then make a great deal of infection and hint for students emotion. Teachers positive body language will promote the students intellectual actions and create a relaxed、 natural and comfortable emotions. Positive emotions and pleasant state of mind are good for conduction 、processing and storage of teaching information, and more to stimulate students motivation to learn. Second language education experts S. Krashen pointed out that anxiety and relax plays a key role in the filter of mood. When learning second language, Young children who feel comfortable and relax always make better achievement than those under pressure. Teachers clean and decent dressed、 amiable expression and gentle caress will help children receive the trust and safety of information. Their learning will not be disturbed from negative emotions such as tension and anxiety, so it is easier to accept the content of learning, and achieve the desired effect. For example, after children learnt some English words about animals ,teacher designed a game situation that gave gifts to each other and prepare a lot of animal toys (the number of animals more than the number of children, after selected the gift, children should speak out the name of animal while they deliver gift. At the beginning of game, many brave and positive children whose language skills well have chosen their favorite toy to give bear Fred, but some timid, introverted child has not come up. Therefore, when many children was in selected teachers should gently walked beside him and bent down, to encourage them in his ear: "You choose the gift as the same as who sent, you can go with him to send.” Teachers warm words and encouragement eyes encouraged children with fully confidence to walk to Bear Fred. Another example, before the English class, we can sing a English greeting song, and children shaking hands, clapping or hugging, it is not only to attract the attention of all children, but also allow them to reduce the psychological burden of children afraid of English and change the pressure in power that make students have confidence in learning English.4.1.2 Using body language to accept students with the language of error toleranceEducational psychology shows that most children have entered school for the first time to accept the social tasks that the community entrusted and expect him to complete in the period 6 to 11 years old, they seek the sense of accomplishment from completing the work and its success was brought about by the teachers recognition and praise 7. If children gain the constant achievements in learning, playing and awards by adults, children will be proud of awards and success, then training optimistic, enterprising and hard working diligent personality. “Conversely, if teachers have no proper teaching way or the students have no hard-working enough and repeated setbacks, especially the achievements were ignored, children are likely to form a sense of inferiority. Therefore, teachers in the classroom should always pay attention to children psychological changes and mood fluctuations.” 8Children will inevitably make mistakes in the process of learning English because they are studying a completely different language from native language in the unfamiliar language environment. Especially in pronunciation, some students often say the” frog “as” floger”, the “tree “as “tee”, at this moment, we should not criticize or blame them that will only inhibit the children's interest in learning, undermining their motivation and self-confidence to learn. When children are wrong, we can gently stroked his head, and tell him "have a try again?" Also duck your body, so that children look at teacher articulation of lips clearly, pointing the mouth and said "say it with me."