Role of Teachers' Verbal and Non-Verbal Communication Instructions in Enhancing EFL Students' Classroom Oral Interaction

Abstract

The present dissertation explores the teachers’ roles towards the application of verbal and non-verbal instructions to improve EFL students’ oral interaction in classroom setting. Teachers tend to exchange messages with the students verbally (or through words) and non-verbally (or via body language) when performing communicative tasks. It has been noticed that the students may encounter some hurdles when communicating orally in English which may cause communication breakdowns and result in misunderstandings. In an attempt to overcome this problem, teachers provide communicative instructions to enable the students ameliorate their speaking and interaction competences. Therefore, this study endeavors to investigate the teachers’ views and practices towards the use of these communicative cues. In light of this, the research adopts the descriptive method which involves the qualitative and quantitative tools. The qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted during the second semester with ten (n=10) EFL teachers and the quantitative classroom observations were realized with teachers of three Master one groups (n=3) at the Department of English, University 8 Mai 1945, Guelma. As such, the collected data confirm the hypothesis which implies that teachers’ instructive use of verbal and non-verbal communication affects the students’ classroom oral interaction. The findings demonstrated that the teachers recognize the significance of communication when conveying meanings with the use of linguistic and paralinguistic features, which may influence positively the EFL students’ classroom oral interaction, in which the latter is regarded as a pivotal contributor to their academic success.