Abstract
This article discusses the importance of the students’ spontaneous smile in EFL classroom interaction, and its implication to their oral production. Findings proved that the students’ spontaneous smile served as a fundamental interactive nonverbal sign for it not only favors a closer relation among students, but also helps them in the co-construction of oral activities in group works. In sum, the students’ spontaneous smile appeared to be a nonverbal indicative of proximity and of increasing oral interaction among them.
Highlights
In conversations, a simple gaze can reveal either a sensation of pleasure or disgust
In relation to the students’ smile, this study argues that such a nonverbal sign may contribute to increase or not the students’ oral production, depending on the interactive moments it is displayed in the classroom and to accomplish specific interactive purposes (Marcuschi, 1991; Koch, 2006)
Since this study focused on face-to-face interaction in the classroom context, the conversation analysis (CA) was the basis of the analysis used for data transcription
Summary
A simple gaze can reveal either a sensation of pleasure or disgust. As part of the process of human communication, can reveal different types of communicative meanings through gestures, eye contact, facial expressions and body language. What someone does while talking might strongly sign his/her personal feelings much more than what is verbally expressed. The way people look at each other and sign their body movements in conversations can be known as nonverbal indicatives of complementing or contradicting the exchanged messages among interlocutors in face-to-face interactions. According to Pennycook (1985), our bodies constantly convey functional meanings in any interaction, and are always coordinated with the spoken language, providing contextual cues to the interlocutor-
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