The purpose of this study is to investigate how effectively nonverbal communication factors are presented in English textbooks for the first grade of middle school under the 7th National Curriculum and to make useful suggestions to contribute to teach...
The purpose of this study is to investigate how effectively nonverbal communication factors are presented in English textbooks for the first grade of middle school under the 7th National Curriculum and to make useful suggestions to contribute to teaching nonverbal communication factors. The study was carried out by analyzing specific nonverbal communication factors such as kinesics, eye contact, proxemics, chronemics, paralanguage and artifacts presented in the textbooks.
The criteria of the textbook analysis are as follows:
1) The types of nonverbal communication factors
2) The ways to present nonverbal communication factors
3) The cultural backgrounds of nonverbal communication factors
4) Whether the cultural tasks of activities are presented in order to understand effectively nonverbal communication factors students have already learned
The results of the analysis can be summarized as follows: First, the types of nonverbal communication factors tend to be focused on kinesics including gestures and facial expressions. Second, nonverbal communication factors are presented in connection with verbal communication expressions within a certain communicative context together with pictures, drawings, and brief explanations. This shows that a successful intercultural communication can be accomplished by understanding nonverbal communication factors. Third, most of these factors are included in the universal culture. Through differences between American and Korean cultures, nonverbal communication factors need to be learned. So, more content of American and Korean cultures are needed in the textbooks. Fourth, the cultural tasks or activities related to nonverbal communication factors are rarely given across most textbooks. To learn various nonverbal communication factors and real communicative contexts, more cultural tasks or activities need to be presented in textbooks.
In conclusion, to develop students' communicative competence, a textbook needs to be provided with useful and various nonverbal communication factors. Also, cultural tasks or activities are necessary to be accompanied with a textbook. In particular, English teachers are played a crucial role in helping the student understand the cultural insights. Therefore they should have systematic knowledge about targeted the culture and nonverbal communication factors for efficient teaching.