비언어적 의사소통에 대한 이해도 조사

A Study of Korean Students' Non-verbal Communication Understanding

The purposes of this study are; (1) to investigate how deeply Korean students understand the non-verbal aspects of human communication and (2) to find whether or not there are significant differences in their understanding of the non-verbal communication and body language between those groups of Korean students. A questionnaire based on Mehrabian formula and some gestures from Morris was used and one hundred and sixty students participated in the study. The results of the study show that: (1) the students' overall level of understanding of the non-verbal aspects of communication is comparatively low, (2) there is no significant difference in their understanding of the non-verbal communication between those who demonstrated ahigher-degree of proficiency on the TOEIC and those who demonstrated a lower degree of proficiency, (3) students show a comparatively higher degree of understanding of body gestures (this is mainly due to simple and unequivocal gesture samples of the questionnaire choices), mainly focusing on kinesics, except for only a couple of cases, (4) there is no significant difference in their understanding of the gestures between those two groups. The results of this study suggest that there is an urgent need for teaching elements of non-verbal communication to Korean students, in order to help them to be more communicative, competitive andcompetent in this rapidly shrinking and globalized world.