28 Body Language Project

Objective: Put together a binder or a digital portfolio with pictures and descriptions of different body language used within a certain language group.

Tell students that they are going to produce a guide about different non-verbal language used by people in their countries to help foreigners visiting the region. Explain that body language varies in different parts of the world and can lead to misunderstandings. If you have an example, tell students about it. If not, you may use the situation below, which happened to a friend of mine.

This story was told me by the mother of a Norwegian girl who had lived in my city for a year on an exchange program. The girl fell in love with this Brazilian guy. They got engaged and she took him to Norway to meet her parents. Her mother, who is a very, very talkative woman, prepared a wonderful dinner for her future son-in-law (by the way, the Norwegian girl and the Brazilian boy have gotten married and have two beautiful children today). Anyway, the poor Brazilian boy could not speak a word of Norwegian and his future mother-in-law talked and talked and talked. At some point, he joined his right thumb and index finger, ran them over his lips (from left to right) and continued until his right ear lobe, holding and shaking it slightly. The lady immediately shut up and kept quiet for the rest of the time. Her daughter, worried, asked her what had happened to which she replied: “He told me to shut up and that’s what I did!”. Fortunately, the misunderstanding was cleared up when her daughter explained that he had actually meant to say that the food was delicious.

Ask students to take pictures of different body language “expressions” used in their native country. They should then write a description of what each one of them means and when they should or shouldn’t be used.

If possible, get copies of the final folder and distribute them to your students and/or post it in your school’s blog or other media.

Note: If you have a monolingual group, students are asked to take pictures and describe, in the target language, the body language used in their native language. If you have a multilingual group, you may have students do it individually or with partners who share their language background. Alternatively, you may have students make a video and talk about the body language shown.