Seeing or acting? The effect of performing gestures on foreign language vocabulary learning

Abstract

We evaluate the impact of gestures during the teaching of vocabulary in a foreign language (FL). Spanish speakers learned words in a FL in four gesture conditions according to the relationship between the meaning of the words and the gestures (congruent gestures, incongruent gestures, gestures without meaning, and no gestures). The participants learned the words by performing gestures (‘do’ teaching group) or by observing the gestures performed by others (‘see’ teaching group). Compared to the meaningless gesture condition, the processing of congruent gestures facilitated the recall of second language (L2) words in the ‘see’ and ‘do’ teaching groups. However, the interference effect associated with the processing of incongruent gestures was greater in the ‘see’ teaching group than in the ‘do’ teaching group. Thus, the performance of gestures seems to mitigate the negative impact that the use of gestures may have on the teaching of vocabulary in a foreign language.

Gestures as Scaffolding to Learn Vocabulary in a Foreign Language

“…Differences appeared between incongruent and meaningless gestures but similar results were obtained when the congruent and no-gesture conditions were compared (see Figure 8). Extended information about statistical data is provided in the paper published by García-Gámez and Macizo in 2021 [4].…”

“…Due to the global and multicultural ambiance we are involved in nowadays, it is mandatory to be able to communicate in different languages. Early techniques for acquiring foreign language (FL) vocabulary employed a first language (L1)-FL word association strategy aimed at establishing connections between newly acquired FL words and their corresponding lexical translations in the native language [1][2][3][4].…”

The effects of observing, imagining, and imitating the instructor’s depictive gestures on learning from instructional videos

“…Imitation involved the observation and execution of other's actions (Tellier, 2008;Mainieri et al, 2013;García-Gámez et al, 2021), which can not only provide semantic information but also activate students' motor and perception systems, thus affecting the cognitive process (James & Swain, 2011;García-Gámez et al, 2021). Embodied cognition theory provided explanations for the positive effects of imitating the instructors' depictive gestures (Wilson, 2002).…”

“…As a passive learning strategy, observing gestures did not always guarantee the effectiveness of learning (Pi et al, 2019;Brucker et al, 2022). Additionally, studies have shown that compared to the observation strategy, the two active strategies of imagination and imitation take advantage of the instructor's depictive gestures (Baills et al, 2018;García-Gámez et al, 2021;Leopold et al, 2019). Imagination is an effective generative learning strategy, helping students construct mental imagery, but increasing the cognitive load (Leahy & Sweller, 2004;Fiorella & Mayer, 2015;Leopold et al, 2019).…”

“…Imagination is an effective generative learning strategy, helping students construct mental imagery, but increasing the cognitive load (Leahy & Sweller, 2004;Fiorella & Mayer, 2015;Leopold et al, 2019). Unlike imagination, the imitation strategy not only is an effective generative learning strategy but externalizes mental representations and frees up cognitive resources, thus reducing the cognitive load (James & Swain, 2011;Baills et al, 2018;García-Gámez et al, 2021). So far, to our knowledge, no empirical study compared the effects of three strategies on video learning including an instructor's depictive gestures.…”