The impact of teacher’s non-verbal communication on students’ speaking performance: the case study of first year efl students at tlemcen university

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to explore the impact of non-verbal communication of EFL teachers on students speaking performance in oral expression session. Therefore an exploratory case study was concerned with first year EFL “licence” students of the English Department at Tlemcen University. Different research instruments were used in order to gather the necessary data. Those instruments included two questionnaires administered to first year EFL students and oral production teachers. These questionnaires were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The main results demonstrated that positive attitudes and behaviors from the part of teachers were the main reasons behind students’ oral participation. The findings also revealed that the suitable solutions to overcome students’ difficulties in oral participation include smiling at them, nodding with the head after they have performed a speaking task and establishing eye contact with them when participating. Also, the results argued that teachers influence students’ oral participation by their attitudes, reactions and non-verbal behaviors, which occur both consciously and subconsciously. At the end, some suggestions and recommendations were proposed in order to overcome the study issue. Those suggestions included the reinforcement of the positive non-verbal behaviors by the teachers to increase students’ motivation and participation during the oral production sessions.