Non-Verbal Communication in Greetings in Chinese: a Pedagogical Proposal

摘要

Due to the problems detected in the practice of teaching Chinese as second Language, on the other hand with the theoretical advances both in nonverbal communication and in pedagogy, especially in that of Chinese language, we began to reflect on the importance of the nonverbal language in intercultural communications. It is found that it necessary to make a theoretical and practical proposal for the integration of nonverbal communication into the Chinese language teaching materials, for the purpose
of improving our students’ communication and
the comprehension on the culture and society
of China. In this goal, the present work consists
in the analysis of nonverbal signs used in some
specific communicative contexts in Chinese
related to the topic of “greetings”, and in the
identification of those nonverbal signs that can
more easily cause errors of interpretation in the
students, mainly by questionnaire, interviews and
bibliographic review. Finally, based on the results
of our study, we present a concrete pedagogical
proposal composed by five activities, in order
to offer a complementary material that could
help the students to avoid misinterpretations in
spoken or written context that block and distort
the transmission of messages.