穨Review. Pdf

Figure 4.3 Reactions to One’s Own Silence 
4.1.4 Non-verbal Communicative Competence 
The students’ oral performance was analyzed to check if the non-verbal language 
behavior showed any difference between the two groups of students after the 
intervention of cooperative learning. The items examined in this section included (1) 
eye contact, (2) smile, and (3) conversational distance with partners. The results 
were presented in Table 4.14.
Table 4.14 Comparisons of Non-verbal Communicative Competence
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Items 
Control group 
Experimental group 
1. Eye contact 
7 
15 
2. Smile 
1 
10 
3. Conversational Distance
a. Beyond 90 cm
7 
1 
b. Appropriate: 60-90 cm 
7 
13 
c. Less than 50 cm 
1 
1 
As shown in Table 4.14, 15 out of 15 total pairs of the students displayed natural 
eye contact while performing the oral task. On the contrary, only half of the students 
(7 out of a total of 15 total pairs) looked at their partners while performing the oral 
task in the control group. In other words, almost half of the students in the control 
group either looked at their feet or looked around the classroom.
Besides the display of eye contact, another important facial expression of smile 
that was also helpful to face-to-face communication was under investigation.
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The units of frequency in this table are based on occurrence appeared in each pair. For example, if 
there is one occurrence of eye contact in Pair One/Control Group, it will be marked “1.” If there is 
more than one occurrence of eye contact in the same pair, the frequency is still “1.”

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Though the students were very nervous while performing the dialogue in front of the 
whole class, there were still 10 pairs out of a total of 15 pairs in the experimental 
group who did not forget to smile at their conversation partners. On the other hand, 
there was only one pair in the control group that smiled while presenting their 
dialogues. Without the facial expression of smiling, most of the dialogues in the 
control group seemed rather rigid and unfriendly. 
The last item scrutinized was the distance the participants kept while talking to 
their partners. There were 13 pairs in the experimental group that kept appropriate 
distance within 60 to 90 centimeters, but only seven pairs in the control group stood 
within such distance. Figure 4.4 was a summary of comparison on the three 
non-verbal aspects of communicative competence between the experimental and the 
control groups. 
0
5
10
15
eye
contact
smile
proper
distance
control
exp