Nonverbal Communication and Foreign Language Teaching

Language is the most important tool for human being to communicate. What we learn language is to communicate. To realize this we need to know some knowledge of nonverbal communication besides language knowledge. Some people just pay close attention to the verbal communication but neglect the nonverbal behavior and messages. Misunderstandings and failures may appear during communication. There are some other causes but one of the most important causes is that we did not notice the role of nonverbal communication in the foreign language teaching. The paper tries to discus this from the following points: nonverbal communication, forms of nonverbal communication, characteristics of nonverbal communication, uses of nonverbal communication and nonverbal communication and foreign language teaching.