SPEAKING WITHOUT WORDS

Posted On 3/27/2019 6:11:00 PM, 4Comments

You sit before a beautiful sunset. It speaks a message of fallibility and beauty. But it doesn’t use any words.

You are walking in a green valley. A message of gratitude and purity is echoing through it. But it doesn’t need any words.

There is a clear river flowing. It is whispering a message of tranquility, purity, change. But not a single word needs to be said.

Yet here we are , always trying to use words. Trying to squeeze the mightiest truths into them. That is why we are not really communicating much at all. Thus, I choose the activity linked below to indicate the importance of body language in the classroom and in our daily life :

https://www.usip.org/public-education/educators/speaking-without-words

 

  While people may say that someone “wears their heart on their sleeve,” in reality, they’re much more likely to be wearing it on their face. A number of studies have shown that people are able to recognize emotions with a high level of accuracy just based on a brief glimpse at a person’s face so words, sentences are having a close relationship with body language and facial expressions.

 In a peacebuilding concept, we can freeheartedly point out the fact that ‘manners maketh man’ and bodily and facial expression constitutes a great part of manners in a society.So bringing this activity to the classroom will help us to raise awareness on effective and kind speaking in a community.

 This activity may be enriched by bringing classroom some sentences that will be understood differently depending on the manner of pronuncing, expressing them and this make students to better understand how body languge affects the meaning of the expressions.

 

Comments (4) -

Deniz
4/5/2019 6:32:02 PM #

Beautiful lines Irem! Did you write those yourself? Very poetic!

I like the choice of activity, I think I might try it myself next year with my own student teachers like yourself. If you were the student in this activity, what lessons would you draw from it? Or what do you exactly expect your students to attain at the end of it?

Deniz

Irem Demirci
4/7/2019 2:03:57 AM #

thank you so much dear Ortactepe,
If I were a student in that kind of activity, I  think I would understand that how words' effects on a person change with and without a body languge assistance so I expect my students to see this difference.

Bill Snyder
4/5/2019 11:06:32 PM #

Hi Irem,

That's an interesting activity. I think we should include teaching about gesture more in language classes. It doesn't get enough attention but it is an important part of communication. We also don't often deal with complex emotions in language classes, and this is another area where students need to be supported.

You point out that people are good at reading emotions on faces. A possible introductory activity for this lesson might be to just give students a card with the names of emotions and ask them to show that emotion and have other students guess what they are feeling. This could be used to teach vocabulary for emotions that students may not know in English, which will give them a basis for participating in the activity you have planned.

All this could lead into a broader lesson about emotional awareness and emotional intelligence, and how these are important for being successful in life, perhaps more important than what we normally think of as 'intelligence'. What really comes out of exploring such topics is, I hope, a broader sense of empathy among students, a willingness to recognize the feelings of others and treat them as legitimate.

I hope this comment is helpful to you.

Best wishes,

Bill

Irem Demirci
4/7/2019 2:07:05 AM #

Thank you Bill Synder!
I found very useful your comments to apply in a classroom environment. It is great to see my thoughts about using body language developed like this.

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Rabia Irem Demirci

4th year student in English Language Teaching at Ondokuz Mayis University