Efficacy of Recasts and Gestures on the Acquisition of Locative Prepositions

Abstract

This study investigates whether gestures can be used during recasts to enhance the saliency of a target structure (locative prepositions) and to lead to better production of the target structure. Forty-eight low-intermediate English as a second language (ESL) students partook in communicative activities during which they received either no feedback (control), verbal recasts only (R), or recasts plus gesture (RG), and a subset of participants completed a stimulated recall session. Then the pretest, immediate, and delayed posttest scores of grammar and oral production tests were used to analyze the linguistic development. The results showed that no one commented on recasts or locative prepositions during the stimulated recall session and that there were no significant changes in grammar test scores in all conditions; however, the R and RG conditions performed significantly better in the production test than the control in the immediate posttest. Furthermore, the RG condition maintained the development in the delayed posttest, whereas the R condition did not.

Interaction and instructed second language acquisition

“…Finally, the role of gestures during interaction has begun to receive attention. For example, Nakatsukasa (2016) found that the combination of gestures and recasts on English locative prepositions lead to sustained improvement on a delayed posttest compared to recasts without gestures.…”

The Efficacy of Gesture on Second Language Pronunciation: An Exploratory Study of Handclapping as a Classroom Instructional Tool

“…However, the effects of instructional gestures on L2 pronunciation have rarely been empirically tested, and the few such reports that do exist did not find positive effects—especially when the instruction targeted individual L2 phonemic features (e.g., Hirata & Kelly, 2010; Hirata, Kelly, Huang, & Manansala, 2014). This lack of empirical support seems surprising considering the positive effects of gesture generally found in other domains (for vocabulary, see Huang, Kim, & Christianson, 2019; Kelly, McDevitt, & Esch, 2009; Macedonia & Klimesch, 2014; Tellier, 2008; for grammar, see Nakatsukasa, 2016, but cf. Nakatsukasa, 2019; for comprehension, see Sueyoshi & Hardison, 2005).…”

How do German bilingual schoolchildren process German prepositions? – A study on language-motor interactions

“…Additionally, it could also specifically improve the learning of spatial categorizations that differ between the L1 and the L2. For instance, research on the efficacy of gestures during the acquisition of locative prepositions [ 74 ] showed that gestures in combination with recasts enhanced the learning of locative prepositions in a delayed post-test, in contrast to the recast-only condition. The use of gestures here can be seen as one form of embodied learning, which in addition to actions are widely used to support learning in foreign language learning and especially the acquisition of foreign language words (for a review see [ 75 ].…”