浅谈非言语交际及其在交际中的影响(11)

5.2.7To create a favorable environment for teaching
    Whether the environment is suitable for teaching also influence the quality of teaching. It concerns the size of the classroom, the furniture of the classroom and the distance between the teacher and students, etc. 
    Firstly, I will stress the influence of space to teaching. If the classroom is too big for a small group of students, students will sit so sparsely that will be not convenient to communicate with each other. And in a big classroom the distance between the teacher and students will be farther, as a result, the teacher’s voice will be not well spread so it is not easy for students sitting in the behind to hear clearly that will due to reduce students’ interest to the lesson. If students lose the interest to the lesson, they will not pay attention to the teacher so the cooperation between the teacher and students will fail. In such circumstance, the quality of teaching will strongly affect. I have such experience in the university. It was a selected lesson, which was few students to choose, but it was arranged to have lessons in a big classroom that will have capacity of more than eighty students and it is too big for only thirty students. In such a big room students can sit freely that some students choose to sit in the behind or in the corner on purpose where the teacher will not pay more attention to easily, thus they can do their things. Though I insisted on listening to the teacher carefully at first for I thought the lesson would have been interesting, I lost the interest at last for the teacher couldn’t activate the atmosphere of the class and attract the attention of students. Secondly, to remove the barrier between teacher and students is beneficial to create a favorite environment for teaching. In western countries teacher and students always sit together in a circle which will reduce the distance between teacher and students so as to make close relationship between each other thus among them will be more chances to interact. My oral English teacher, a foreigner, paid attention to remove the mental defense of students, so he always removed the desk in the front of the classroom which is considered to be a barrier of communication between teacher and students or he made us sit in a circle to make us feel closer. He thought that an unbarricaded teacher would be willing to encourage the development of different viewpoints of students and give individual attention to students who need it. So I think this is the reason for why his lesson was so popular among students in our department.
So a favorite environment is a key factor to engage students in the lesson. 
 
Conclusion
In the past decades, many linguists, sociologists, language teachers and communication specialists have done a lot of researches concerning nonverbal communication. But nonverbal communication is still a young science which needs to be studied further. This paper gives a general introduction of nonverbal communication and stresses its influence in communication, specially pointing the important role in teaching and implication to teaching. Successful communication among people concerns verbal behavior as well as nonverbal one. So in order to improve the quality of our communication, it is helpful to learn something about this important form of human communication.