Male and Female Teachers’ Nonverbal Communication in EFL Classroom

ABSTRACT The objectives of this study were to examine the kinds of teachers’ nonverbal communicationmostly used in EFL classroom and the students’ perceptions towards the male and female teacher’s nonverbal communication in EFL classroom. The research was conducted through descriptive qualitative method involving classroom observation and interview. The respondents comprised of two teachers, a male and a female English teacher and 18 students from three different classes. The result of data analysis showed that there were seven kinds of nonverbal communication used by the teachers in teaching English namelygesture, posture, eye contact, facial expression, touch, voice, and distance. Findings also show that the teachers’ nonverbal communication gave impact on the students’ learning process, such as teacher’s gesture can help the students have better understanding, eye contact with the student means that teacher is paying attention to the students, teacher showed smiling expression while teaching will make students feel happy. While the teacher with an angry expression will make the students feel depressed and uncomfortable, the students feel appreciated if they have touched by the teacher. , some students agree that teachers can help students catch the message better if the teacher has a loud voice. Although teacher raised her/his voice to admonish the students may make them irked and do not attend the class.In implementing touch and distance in teaching EFL, both teachers have restriction because the female students felt bit uncomfortable with male teachers while the male students felt bit uncomfortable with female teachers. Besides, male and female teachers have different ways of using nonverbal communication. Male teacher more actively appreciate the students by giving his thumbs up. Sitting when explaining the lesson was rarely doing by male teacher, whereas female teacher always doing it. On the other hand, female teacher showed her attention when the students were talking by tilting her head