Speech/Pronunciation:  The Importance of body language in communication

Janet Goodwin and Colleen Meyers

goodwin@ucla.edu   meyer002@umn.edu 

Presenters highlight the role of video in teaching students the importance of body language in effective communication.  Topics are the contribution of gestures to accurate stress and intonation and International Teaching Assistants’ (ITA) use of body language to enhance their instruction

Goodwin--Gestures

Basic assumptions:

  1. Successful oral communication is not just production but interaction.
  2. Words become meaningful only through the interaction of verbal, prosodic, and kinesic actions in context—Students ask for vocabulary, but words are just the beginning, only a part of communication.

Use of video (in this case, clips taken from TV sit-coms

  1. “Eliminating the visual modality creates an unnatural condition which strains the auditory receptors to capacity.” (Von Raffler-Engel, 1980)  i.e. It helps to see the person we’re talking to.
  2. Using TV video allows the student to distance himself and observe.  It increases the channels of meaning by providing both visual and auditory clues.
  3. Copyright info:

http://www.nolo.com/encyclopedia/articles/pet/nn72.html

http://www.law.cornell.edu/topics/copyright.html

Gestures as a communication tool

  1. Gestures coincide with stressed syllables and prominence.  We make beats with our heads, hands and bodies.  Self-synchrony
  2. Gestures are used to manage turns in a conversation.  Listening behavior: leaning forward, making eye contact while SPEAKER makes gestures.  Stops making eye contact for turn taking.
  3. Gestures reinforce the linguistic message or meaning.

Gestures as a learning tool

  1. To aid memory—we wave a hand, point a finger while we try to retrieve lexicon.  It also relieves the tension in the effort of recall.
  2. To relax (breathing techniques)
  3. To internalize pronunciation features
    1. Stress and prominence

·        rubber bands—stretching on stress                  Gilbert, 1994

·        standing up—may not hear it, but can feel it; bouncing up on stress syllable                                                                 Chan, 2001

·        rolled up paper—hit something or someone   Acton, 2001

    1. Rhythm

·        stepping—walking something out                     Orton et al, 1995

·        the ‘Yellow brick Road’ scene in the Wizard of Oz—‘lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”                               Grant, 2001

    1. Intonation

·        hands ala choral director

·        body—up on toes, then bend at knees: example, “That’s a disgusting notion”  up on –gus—and bend on no--.

 

Classroom Use:  She showed a short clip from Friends (through Quick Time there is a way to digitalize video) then showed her students re-enacting it.

  1. Show it silently so students can analyze attitudes and emotions from the body language. 
  2. Ask what is happening and why.
  3. Play it with sound.
  4. Text analysis—have students mark text with through group prominence, intonation patterns, any overt gestures, volume variations, etc.
  5. Discuss.
  6. Play again to validate comments.
  7. Students study at home and memorize both parts (only two parts in the clip)
  8. Students practice and act it out in class. They have the script for cuing, but it is interaction with gesture and intonation, stress, etc. that is important.
  9. Video the pair in action, they will analyze their performance with the teacher in private.

Comment:

A very instructive session with lots of application to adult ESL.  While most of us are limited in technology, we can copy clips from TV for use in the classroom.  Transcribing is a time consuming job, but could be used over and over once done.

The stress, rhythm, intonation ideas are applicable at any level.  These supra-segmentals do a great deal to help our students be more understandable.

 

Marsha Chan’s Pronunciation Workout for Foreign Language Learners:

http://sunburstmedia.com /present/pronwkt/index.htm

Judy Gilbert:  Clear Speech  Cambridge

L. Grant:  Well said:  Pronunciation for clear communication.  Heinle & Heinle

J. Orton, R. Swart, A. Isaac, and C. Thompson:  The rhythm of language  A 20 minute video produced by the Television and Optical Disk Developments Unit for the Department of Language and Literacy, the University of Melbourne, Australia

Morley, J (ed.) Pronunciation pedagogy and theory.   TESOL

 

 

Meyers—ITAs

Most of us have attended a class or lecture given by a Non-Native Speaker (NNS) and some of us have had great difficulty understanding the message.  Within the teaching process, rapport plays a large part in communicating comprehensibly.

Definition of Body Language

It is para-language involving rate, speed, and volume, as well as non-verbal acts, such as facial movement, gestures, use of space, eye contact, etc.

Importance

Research has shown that:

7% of communication is verbal

93% of communication is non-verbal

            38% is vocal tone

            55% is facial movement (There are 23 separate and distinct eyebrow

positions. (McCloskey 1997)

We are all aware that words can be manipulated (lying) but that gestures are harder to control (they often freeze when a person lies).

 

Stevick 1980                                     Affective

 

 


                        Cognitive                                                        Psycho-motor

            Competence (awareness)                                       Performance

These three components interact as we try to communicate.  Each culture has different patterns and combinations.  The ITA needs not only the linguistics skills, but also the new patterns involved in American Academic teaching.

 

She showed a video, again without sound of an American lecturing.  We guessed what he was saying by observing his gestures.  With sound, we confirmed our guesses.  She then showed a NNS.  There were little if any gestures.  We couldn’t get any clues.  She added sound.  We still couldn’t.

 

Classroom use

The process she uses to assist ITAs improve their teaching style.

  1. After viewing video tapes and being made aware of differences, students shadow a conversation.  2 native speakers (NSs) stand in front of or slightly beside 2 NNSs.  The NSs converse, one turn at a time.  After each utterance, the NNS repeats the utterance AND all the gestures.

Problems with shadowing: NS conversation and gestures are stilted and forced.  Long turns are difficult.  Matching M with F shadow (and the reverse) causes problems. 

She has changed this to shadowing a movie or TV scene.  HANDOUT

  1. Mime exercises (psycho-motor).  Pairs of students try to communicate through only gesture the concepts on the list, using their own cultural style.  Problems will occur, i.e., “last time” is often indicated by a hand movement to the left.  This will not be normal for Asians.  HANDOUT
  2. Story exercises(psycho-motor).  .  ITAs transform a presentation into a story.  They must add interest by focusing on facial expression, use of space, and volume, tone and voice variation.
  3. Same, this time focusing on enunciation and exaggerating lip, jaw, and tongue movements.  Audio-tape selves.
  4. Critique video of a presentation and reflect on changes in body language, how they feel about it, if there has been a difference in the rapport within the class, etc.

 

Comment: Some of these activities can be adapted to the adult ESL classroom. Video clips can be a useful tool for students to imitate not only the speech but also the body language.  Most students have VCRs at home, so practicing is possible and conceivable even fun. Teachers often forget to emphasize that in the act of communication.