In assessing communicative language ability (CLA), nonverbal communication strategy, as an indispensable component under the category of strategic competence, plays a pivotal role that exerts influence on candidates’ overall oral performance. Previous studies not only attached importance to nonverbal delivery in communication but also indicated its applicability as one of the measures against which candidates’ spoken English can be assessed. However, there is no immediate applicable framework to which the assessment with such considerations can refer. Taking the strategic competence of CLA model as the theoretical basis and Jungheim’s (1995) Nonverbal Ability Scale as the operationalised taxonomy, the present study put forward four most representative forms of nonverbal delivery and applied them to transcribe the performance of 32 advanced college EFL candidates in group discussion. By aligning nonverbal delivery occurrences and durations with the holistic and analytic scores assigned by raters, this study proved the rationality, reliability and validity of the observed nonverbal delivery forms. Some initial research findings concerning how Chinese EFL learners’ performance of nonverbal delivery interacts with verbal utterances were also presented to show their relations. Based on the above, it is suggested that nonverbal delivery be incorporated into the assessment of spoken English, especially in the context where more detailed feedback or assessment domains are expected, and that the findings on the nonverbal delivery characteristics should inform the design of a rating scale with nonverbal delivery as a dimension.
I. INTRODUCTION
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
III. RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND DESIGN
IV. RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
V. CONCLUSION
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