The Application ofBody Language inTeaching ways in Vocational Schools

1. Introduction

As English teachers, we should realize that the classroom teaching plays an important part in learning English course.To master English become more and more useful in vocational students, especially after graduated, but most of students think English is very boring and dull, how to deal with those problems, teachers must arouse the students interest so that they may learn better, speaking, listening, and reading as well. English teachers must spurn the outdated teaching methods and find a lot of new ways. There are many means to arouse the students interest and help them to learn better, body language is a good ways in teaching English class.

When we communicate with people from other cultures, our body language sometimes helps make the communication easier and more effective, such as by shaking hands, when greeting others, This has become such a universal gesture that people all over the world know that it is a signal for greeting. The expert on body language research, Dag hummarskjild, once said: “ The unspoken dialogue between two people can never be put right by anything they say.. It’s right saying. In class school body language plays an activity role in cultivating the student’s characters. Because teachers are standing on the stages, usually respected, the students listening what he is talking and watching what he is doing. So teacher’s elegance body language cultivate the student’s current taste and moral character. If the students are active in doing wonderful body language, which will possibly built up them form an optimistic and confidence, they will surely get on well with his friends, person to person relation ship. The teacher’s body language on the students is reflected not only studying English but also share happiness and joy with each other, they lends to interested in English, built up a relax studying atmosphere.. In fact, teachers’ friendly.

Appearance can greatly encourage the students studying enthusiasm. Furthermore, the characteristics of theoretic and abstraction of knowledge also requires the vivid, dramatic and an accessible gestures to make it specific and figurative. In a words the students’ interest is motivated and the good effect of teaching is greatly improved.

2. Problem Analysis

In my Teaching experience ,I always do my best to investigate why the students were showing less and less interested, and devoting less and less effort,and find new teaching mode in English

（1） It is found that:

a. Those poor students, due to their limitedvocabulary， cannot follow the teacher in class, and many times can’t complete the tasks,

b. Most of the students who comes from country ,their English level is not good ,for example their broken English ,can ‘t communicate with other people in English ,just like a deaf.even they can’t read and writing well .

c. Somestudentshave n’t confident to speak loudly, they are very shy in English class.

d. The teacher’s methods lack variety.

Cause analysis:

In this situation ,I met a lot of questions and do my best to provide some answers to them .

Why did most of my students think English is very boring and dull ,they haven’t interest on English ? In order to know more about this problem ,following my cause exploration procedure .

Is it because they do not like English calss?May be

Is it because they are not motivated ？ Possibly yes

Is it because my action is not clear ,they can’t understand it ? May be

If I smiled to the students to encourage them to speak loudly ? Yes .

Is it because they want to know about fashion things and words in English ?

May be

3. Possible Solutions

Taking the above factors into consideration, the following solutions were proposed:

a. Usingbody language to help the students understand and learn new knowledge.

b. Organizing interesting activities to motivate the students to memorize the words ,improve English level, such as listening ,speaking ,reading and writing.

c. Built upthe relaxclassroom studying atmosphere and a good teacher-student relationship.

4. Project Objective

This project is aimed to improve the students’ speaking ,listening ,reading ,and writing level and become betterbody language

5. Project Hypotheses

Considering the age and majorfactors of the students, body language can help students understand teaching materials quickly and easily and thus motivate the students to be active in learningEnglish happily.

6. Research Design

Subjects：For this research, I chose the two group of my students as subjects, one as the Experimental Group(A group), the other as the Control Group(B group). The experimental and control groups were randomly selected by body language. Throughout the project, the Experimental Group will receive special designed brief drawing instruction, while the control group goes on with its routine instruction.

Procedure：This project lasted onemonth from Septemberto October

Principles to follow：*This action will usually give the students a deep impression .

*Adapt body language in English teaching is frequently used to improve the teaching effect and the studetents’ ability .

*Create a good teacher-student relationship, motivate and encourage them without forcing.

*Provide a ‘stress-relax ’ and ‘learner-centered’ environment.

6.1 Techniques for Data Collection

During this research two techniques were adopted, namely questionnaire and test.（1） To gather information for the design of the research and to test whether the research is effective, two questionnaires will be issued, one at the beginning of the research and the other at the end.（2） Two testswill be included (one as the pretest, the other as the post test for comparison) to test the co-efficiency between motivation and school recording.（3）

7. Project Implementation

7.1 Demonstrate the pronunciation essentials by body language

The students always feel dull and difficult when they first learn the phonetic symbols. Now ,in my English class ,I offered students Li yang ‘s crazy English gesture , and let them realize the characteristic of the pronunciations. Createcrazy English atmosphere ,thenthey are crazy about English .Example 1:

Strengtha forefinger and circle around in air . and teach the student to pronounce

/ a i / 超级大嘴饱满“阿姨”合口双元音

Great minds think alike .

The thumbs up sign just like sewing with thread ,and teach the studentsto pronounce/i:/,穿针引线长元音Sweet dreams

Example 3:

Put the hands back behind ears ./ei/嘴角咧到耳朵上，合口双元音：I make a mistake

Example 4:

国际音标

这是一个最疯狂，最典型的美国发音，（Typical American Sound）.出现频率特别高！如果你发

时尽量夸张，你的美国味一下子就出来了哟，不信你试试。

Nickname外号：“大开口夸张90度”或“二指音”

Matching Sound类似音：绵羊叫音 或驴叫音 。

Use those gesture ,the students can correctly pounce phoneticand remember the symbols clearly with strong impression .

7.2 Use body languageto teach vocabulary

For the vocational students ,in English teaching course ,we meet a big problemis vocabulary. They don’t know how to remember it and understand it ,Teaching vocabulary with bodycan motivate students and make them learn English with interest.

7.2.1 Use body languagetovocabulary

Example 1: When teaching“respect“,I like to use both hands ,as in figure 1,to show respect ,show how to accept something ,we also take it with both hands to express respect .the students are willing to be imitate my action and open their mouth ,pouncethe words loudly.

Example 2:When teaching “affection ,I ‘d like to pat the head of my students.applause “ and “clap”,the students think it is hard to remember and understand .

Example 3: “hitch-hiking” ,the thumbs-up sign

Sure ,when we met a lot of emotions words ,such as happy ,surprised ,afraid ,angry sad and disgusted .our teachers shouldexpress our emotions by facial expression.

Example 4 “glance “to give a quick look

“peep” to give long ,steady look

“feast your eyes “ to examine something closely

“gaze” to give a quick ,secret look

Inspectto look at something because you are pleased to see it

I ask the students to act the “look”: situation ,as actors or actress , they are very interested in this facial game ,and remember the seriesof words clearly .

The goodway of this student attracted others greatly. All the students smiled and memorized the words in a relaxed atmosphere.

7.2.2 Use body language helps to improve listening level

Students in the vocational secondaryschool often confuse meanings of numbers when they are listening some material such as time ,years ,age ,and bill numberand so on ，it is a big block in the way to understand a story .use body language ,mention them ,it can help them to understand .

Example 1:

1905 ,1925,1928 ,

When they are listening ,I put up my finger and show the number to them ,the big problem become easy ;

Eg: Gao shiqi was born in 1905 ,in Fujian province ,IN 1925 he went to study chemistry in America ,In 1928he had an accident when he as doing his studies in the chemistry lab .

Example 2:

4:406:00 81

Play the recorder ,and then them hear a short conversation on the tape ,I tell them time and age by gesture .William Shakespeare said “There ‘s language in her eye ,her cheek ,her lip” From the saying we can learn how important the listening it is in our daily life .in this process ,if the body language is used ,the effect will better ,a teacher who sing song with dance under the premise of teaching order will surelyachieve a better effect .

7.3 Body language helps to improve speaking level .

Weknow that oral English is plays an important roles in communication ,we teachers should do ours best to help the students’ speaking level .most of time ,I often use body langue in English teaching course .

Example 1：

When teach them to speak “Thank you ”,I put both hands upright ,palms open ,beside the cup when it is being refilled tea by my student and smiled to them.

When teach them to speak “Sham on you “I extend one finger and touch my face with the tip of the forefinger several times quickly. Or I extend both forefingers with palms down in front of his body ,and then one forefinger makes several brushing movements over the back of the other forefinger .

“give me money ”we should do ring gesture . “come here ” the single finger beckon .“You can’t fool me ”the eyelid pull .

Example 2

The spoken English teaching become more major situation .every unit includes dialogue ,how to organize the class to practice English ?how to find way to fit the characteristics ofdialogue ,in my English ,we should not only use body languages my selves ,but also ask the students to use them in according to a variety of situation. For example ,vocational school English book ,unit 2 “self introduction “ passage: Professor Waters begins her first class ,She introduces herself to her students. When I introduce the dialogue to students ,I ask a student do act and use gestures as possible as he can. she smiles when I say hello to the class, she shakes hands with a boy students ,when I saying “glad to meet you “he shows his name on the sign .the boy imitates the action of dribblingand shooting at the basketball ,playing chess ,turning pages to explain his hobby ..do act as strong man .the girlwas dancingasWaltz and sing song, she looked like very happy.Then I ask the students to practice spoken English dialogue . ,After their practice the dialogue is introduced naturally from it .in a word ,the use of body language in different situations will result in an attracting and successful lesson.

7.4 Body language helps to improve reading ability

In vacation secondary school,. The aim of English teaching is to train the students’reading ability that serves the students’ further study.. However their vocabulary is limited ,so ,when they read some article or stories ,expressions and idioms became their big block . in their reading process ,I ‘d like to help them and mention them by body language ,it is easy to understand smoothly. For example :A lot of English idioms about the five sense organs such as eyes ,noses ,mouth and ears and so on .in some extend ,body languages give the teachers and student’s help .based on my teaching experience , we need not only to understand the context in which it occurs ,but also to accumulate different expressions featuring the different thing and see if there is any similarity in their cultural associations .the vivid gesture together with the fluent English make the students getting rid of the students’ feelings of being dull and tired .they guess them the students are eager to know the idiom’s meaning and use them correctly.

ForSecretary major book I

Example 1 Lead other people by the nose(牵着别人鼻子走): for example ,if a wife “leads her husband by the nose “she makes him do whatever she wants him to do .action as a angry lady lend his husband ,and shout him.

Keep his nose clean(使自己不找任何麻烦)keep your nose clean spoken to make sure you do not get in trouble ,or do anything wrong or illegal .She’s gotto keep his nose clean or he’ll end up back in prison .or stay out of trouble .action as crossing my hands and closing my eyes

Put a bug in your ear(给你一种启发和建议)give you an idea about something or give you an idea about something .action :I put a thing into my ear ,and ask the students ,I tell them if your teacher often give you some good advice ,in other words is that my teacher often put a bug in my ear .

Do not bad mouth me (不说脏话，别乌鸦嘴)For example ,if you say bad things about a person ,the person might pretest and say ,sometimes ,people say something to a friend or family member that they later reset because hurts it that person’s feelings .Or they tell the person somethingthey were not supposed to tell

Action : coveringmouth by hands

“ones eyes might pop out ”(眼睛睁得大大的，吃惊的样子)When his food arrives at the table ,his eyes might pop out .He might be very surprised by the amount of food provided .He might not even believe his own eyes .the same words is that this might even cause raised eyebrows （吃惊的样子）

Above of all ,this action will usually give the students a deep impression . so we can see ,the application of body language in English teaching is necessary and practical .In the English teaching in vocational school ,body language is used to improve the teaching effect and the students’ ability.

8. Data Analysis

After4 weeks’ action research ,I designed Questionnaire two ,(See appendix ) so that comparisons could be made to the improvement .in designing this new questionnaire ,I also used feed back information from my solution to the problems discussed so that their effectiveness could be reflected by the results .Compared with the first questionnaires ,the second one had it one features ,for by now I was more conscious of usefulness of organize the English class ,I am eager to know what my students had gained and if they like to use gestures and facial express in class .

Table 1----comparison of students’ interest in learning English

Degree of interest Like a lot like Like a little Not like

Before the research 6% 46% 34% 14%

After the research 24% 61% 9% 6%

Figure 1---- comparison of students’ interest in learning English

This question is to check if the brief drawings are helpful to the students in learning English.

Accord in to investigation ,it can be seen that the body languageinstruction is very helpful to the students. The number of the students who report to be able to digest what they have learnt in English lesson in class has distinctly increased. Only a small number of students report they cannot digest the contents of lessons. This indicates the effectiveness of the solution. In order to obtain more detailed data, I sum up the students’ comments on the helpfulness of the brief drawings. It is summarized in the following pie chart to show the effectiveness:

9．Conclusion

This paper is the result of the a few years teaching work , In order to solve the identified problem, several solutions were implemented during the action research. Data collected from questionnaires and examination shows bodylanguage can help motivate vocational middle school learners in the learning of vocabulary, dialogue, reading ,listening level ,even concepts,To a certain degree ,as an English teacher , we teachers need to find new ways to teach student ,as an old saying ,”A drop of water to students commands a bucket of water on the teacher “ ,you should be too impatient to wait ,you’d do it step b step according to the situation in your class ,just remember one thing that is to encourage them ore and give them chances.

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