Incorporating Nonverbal Communication Skills into Teaching and Learning English Presentations

摘要

Delivering a presentation is more than just giving information; it also aims to entertain, inspire, motivate and even to activate the listeners. To obtain the expected results, a presenter must attract his audience's attention sufficiently and communicate his thoughts and feelings adequately by also implementing nonverbal communication elements, i.e. vocal and body language. Furthermore, presentation skill is very important in the work place, but delivering presentations has undeniably been a distressful task for most people. This study aims to share the experience of teaching Business English Presentations in the Polytechnic of LPKIA Bandung and to reveal the positive impacts of integrating nonverbal communication skills in the teaching and learning English presentations. The method used is descriptive analytics, and the data collecting techniques are library research, observation and interview. The study comprises several stages from designing the syllabus of the subject to observing students' performance during the final examination. The study unveils that during the final examination, students mostly managed to perform more-natural nonverbal communication elements, showed greater confidence, and communicated better in their presentations. It can be concluded that incorporating nonverbal communication elements can take the learners out of their comfort zone and improve their English presentation skills.