Given the above, what are pedagogic communication means about ? How does the teacher express himself, through which expressive expedient, through what kind of language? Very few pedagogic studies treat of educational practice - in a broad sense - under the specific angle of pedagogic communication. However, when observing teachers in their classrooms, one concludes that pedagogic communication corresponds to a particular use of language and of communication systems, well recognised and studied in other contexts (illustrations, sketches, graphics, fixed images, movies, videos, and so on). Thinking for a while about how you teach, one could perhaps agree upon a first classification of the ways we communicate:
1. Oral linguistic communication
Teacher speak and use written documents. Oral verbal language is the basic teaching and training vehicle, in fact. And we well know that this remains the most important means of communication in education.
2. Non-verbal communication
A teacher moves, has his particular mimics and looks, uses body language and posture to convey his message. As he moves he, in some way, occupies the classroom: he solicits his students attention, prompts one of them to give an answer, etc. In pedagogic face-to-face communication, the teacher uses for expressive and communicative purposes an impressive number of non-verbal indications that the recipients have no trouble interpreting. In this same category are also classified the teacher's changes of tone, vocal modulations and inflections, in brief, any intuitive element contributing to manifest the 'presence' of an interlocutor. This may look like a kind of paradox since these elements are well related to linguistic expression and are still not analysed in linguistics studies, in the strict meaning of the term. They are rather compounded with other non-verbal communication forms. As a conclusion, we may say that the emotive and affective aspects of pedagogic communication are mainly carried out by non-verbal communication forms.
3. Audio-scripto-visual communication
If oral language remains the main vehicle of teaching , other kinds discourse and of knowledge representation modes with educational objectives are evolving and are becoming gradually more widespread. Teachers primarily use written texts but also sound and/or visual documents. Educational software, electronic books and multimedia packages progressively become part of pedagogic routine. Likewise, books and textbooks come up with an increasing number of illustrations, and, if books are essentially made of verbal language cues (of linguistic communication), let's also remember that they force them into visual and graphic constraints, especially through page layout and typesetting. This is why we call this kind of communication scripto-visual communication. As is the case for verbal language, the audio-scripto-visual mode takes into account both informative and cognitive aspects of pedagogic communication.