Oleh : Adinda Afria
Body Language
According to one of American psychologist, Albert said that people get 55% information from expression or we can say it Body Language. So what is body language? body language is a non verbal signal that we use to communicate something. Body language is also a silent and true language, which can express a person’s inner world, it always catch one’s eye mostly in non-communicative ways.
In teaching, body language as a non-verbal communication has a important place more than verbal communication. Xiaoling Yang (2017) said that in classroom when we are teaching, our body language becomes the support system and supplement of teaching and occupies an important position in teaching. Furthermore, to become an inspiring teacher our body language must be right and suits with the students. Body language can be a very effective communication tool between you and your students. Using proper body language can also help you develop effective classroom management skills and it may even allow you to influence your students and you can control what happens in the classroom.
Based on book Inspired English Teaching by West (2010) there are 7 part that is include in body language, the first is The Face/Facial Expression, second is Basic Emotion, third is Posture, fifth is Hands, sixth is Eye Movement, and the last is The Voice, but in this part I only want to explain about Hands and Basic Emotion.
1. Hands
When teaching, our hands often move erratically or quite active. Based on the book Inspired English Teaching by West (2010) actually if our hand’s quite active it will show that we are uneasy or upprehensive but if we are calm, we have self assured, our hands will move very little. If we are sitting at a desk, better for us to resting our hands calmly on the top. If we are in the front of the room, facing our class, put one hand in a pocket or keep it slightly active. The book Inspiring English Teaching by West (2010) also explain about how to stop or to remind the students who did something out of the rules or material. The first is gesturing to avoid conflict and assert authority and further hands that we can use.
As we know until this day there are teachers who still bellow out his/her order to the student, where actually better for a teacher to get the students attention and raise a finger as a sign of warning to stop the students who doing something wrong. You can also raise hand-palm towards the students like policeman. This signal can be used to stop students asking multitude of question, or maybe answering everything, or speaking out of his/her turn. Further hands signal you can use is gain eye contact with him/her and place finger to your lips, nodding at the person that you don’t want him/her to speak, or use a ‘zip closed’ action across your lips.
2. Basic Emotion
From the book Inspired English Teaching by West (2010) basic emotion is one of the important things that we have to know that is surprise, fear, disgust, sadness, angger, happiness. If we can read it well we will be able to control our own facial expression and we can understand the students and if we are a teacher for young learners we can introduce this basic emotion for them. Basic emotion is also important to use if we teach the students about reading poetry or prose.
Seating Arrangement
The next important thing beside Body Language is seating arrangement. Based on the book Inspired English Teaching by West (2010) there are three seating arrangements, teh first is Orderly Rows, second is Horseshoes, and last is Separate Tables.
1. Orderly Rows
This is a traditional seating arrangement method that we can see in so many schools. In this seating arrangement every desk of the students will face forward.
The advantage from this method, teacher can view all the students and the students can see the teacher. The teacher can gain eye contact with all the students. There are aisles in the classroom which can make the teacher walk side to side easily. Then the teacher can make personal contact with the students. While the disadvantage from this method harder to involve the whole class.
2. Horseshoes
Horseshoes in Bahasa are known as latter U variation. The desks in a horseshoe shape, with two spare desks in the middle of the horseshoe-placed long ways.
The advantage from this method is the students have more potential for sharing ideas, informations, and feelings and essential for speaking and listening and debates. While the disadvantage we need a big classroom because to implementing this method it depends on the size and also location of the classroom
3. Separate Tables
In Separate Tables the seat of the students will be in a small group at individual tables. This seat can be used when teaching mixed-ability groups.
The disadvantage from this method is the teacher can’t see all of the students and it is also more difficult if the teacher wants to break off the work and explain something to the whole class.
SDM-O (Sumber Daya Mahasiswa-Organisasi) Himajubi (Himpunan Mahasiswa Jurusan Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris)
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