Nonverbal cues include communicative markers like gestures, eye contact, nodding, tone of voice, and intonation among others which are associated and concomitant with language either consciously or unconsciously while playing significant roles in communication. The related literature demonstrates that nonverbal cues have great potential in foreign language learning. In this regard, it was predicted that EFL learners' attitudes toward nonverbal cues could affect their learning process significantly. This descriptive-analytical study was conducted to investigate students' attitudes toward their instructors' use of nonverbal cues in their communication and the extent to which using these elements could facilitate students' learning process. Utilizing a questionnaire as our instrument, we collected data from 50 undergraduate senior students of Linguistics at the University of Gonabad. Our rationale for choosing senior college students was to identify their attitudes toward their instructors' use of nonlinguistic cues since the beginning of their academic career at the university. Our findings revealed that our students had positive attitudes toward teachers' recruitment of nonlinguistic cues in their communication. Moreover, the parameter of gender was not found to affect students' attitudes with both males and females having positive attitudes toward the significance of nonverbal clues in communication. However, the parameter of learners' background experience of utilizing nonverbal clues in their native language was strongly related to their attitude toward EFL learning. Considering the predominant role of nonverbal communication in Iranian EFL settings, it was recommended that their recruitment in English teaching be taken more seriously. پرونده مقاله

Paralinguistic features are indispensable and crucial aspects of communication without which any utterance would lose its identity. On the other hand, confusion in cross-cultural communication is most often assigned to paralinguistic features. Despite the significant importance of paralinguistic clues in humans’ communication, only limited studies have tackled this issue. More specifically, despite the fact that paralinguistic features are culturally different, no study has investigated the possible relationship between these features and speaking performance of Persian-speaking learners of English. Hence, with this existing gap in the literature, in this study, we tried to scrutinize the impact of paralinguistic cues upon EFL learners’ speaking fluency in the Persian setting. To this objective, we recruited 40 first-year undergraduate female students of Linguistics at the University of Gonabad, utilizing non-random sampling method. Their English proficiency level was determined as lower-intermediate via the administration of Quick Oxford Placement Test. In our pre-test post-test experimental research, we allocated a five-week span of instruction for the purpose of teaching paralinguistic clues to the experimental group to see whether it could have a significant positive impact upon their speaking performance. The instrument we utilized to evaluate speaking capability of our participants was Researcher-Made Speaking Test. The results of our study demonstrated that utilizing paralinguistic features boosted students’ speaking capability. On the light of our finding, it could be concluded that paralinguistic features could be employed for the first-year undergraduate students to enhance their communicative performance. Future studies in diverse EFL settings, could shed light on this conclusion. پرونده مقاله