Effectiveness of Verbal and Non-Verbal Communication for Teaching and Learning at University Level

Abstract

Verbal communication is a major part of everyday interaction. Verbal communication is about the language, both written and spoken. Non-verbal communication, in contrast to verbal communication, is a silent language used to convey messages by gestures, eye contact, body movement, etc., as opposed to words. For better comprehension of students’ concepts, the teacher should use their body language, eye interaction, and facial expressions. Teachers may encourage verbal and nonverbal communication with students to speed up learning with little effort. The Objective of the current research is to ascertain how verbal and nonverbal communication enhances students' learning process, the effectiveness of verbal and non-verbal communication in combination, and problems associated with interpreting verbal and non-verbal communication from students' perspective and their perceived effective learning. A sample size of 161 students with a confidence level of 95% and a confidence interval of 5% was determined for the survey. A convenient sampling technique was used to develop respondents from the target group. A well-constructed questionnaire was used to collect the data, and it was developed with the study's goals in mind. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to analyse it. According to the results, all non-verbal behavior like facial expression, eye contact, physical distance and pitch of voice has a very effective impact on students learning. Verbal and non-verbal communication encourages self-learning and constructive learning of students, develop cognitive skill in students, relate different skills with study and encourage creativity in students.  However, there are some problems with nonverbal communication. As teachers less interpret non-verb communication, students often ignore the teacher’s nonverbal communication, which is less serious behavior of teachers for performing non-verbal activity.  Sometimes teachers feel shy while performing non-verbal activities, and students are not serious about learning from non-verbal.