The Function of Gesture in Lexically Focused L2 Instructional Conversations

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the mediational function of the gesture–speech interface in the instructional conversation that emerged as teachers attempted to explain the meaning of English words to their students in two EFL classrooms in the Ukraine. Its analytical framework is provided by Vygotsky's sociocultural psychology (e.g., Lantolf & Thorne, 2006) and McNeill's (1992, 2005) theory of gesture–speech synchronization, in particular his notion of catchment—recurrent gestural features that perform a cohesive function. Although the interactions between teachers and students were brief, lasting a mere one minute and fourteen seconds, they were pedagogically rich and remarkably informative regarding the role of gesture in classroom instructional conversations. The analyses suggest that the gesture–speech interface is a potent mediational tool through which students imagistically display details of their understandings of L2 word meanings that do not always emerge through the verbal medium alone. For their part, the teachers integrated gesture into their instructional talk as a way of remediating and improving student understandings. Finally, students signaled their modified understandings by appropriating and using the teachers' gestures in their own expressive moves.

When Hands Speak Louder Than Words: The Role of Gesture in the Communication, Encoding, and Recall of Words in a Novel Second Language

“…Considered in conjunction with work showing that gesture production facilitates L2 acquisition in classroom and naturalistic conversational settings (Adams, 1998;Smotrova & Lantolf, 2013;van Compernolle & Williams, 2011), the findings suggest that encouraging participants to gesture when learning novel L2 words in laboratory settings, as well as in classroom settings, may enhance their acquisition of these words more than simply allowing them to view gestures in conjunction with target words. The relationships between gestures and verbal explanations of L2 word meanings also suggest that the intrinsic variability and interactivity of classroom and conversational settings, which allow for spontaneous verbal exchanges, may be conducive to L2 word learning.…”

“…This prompts their interlocutors to suggest appropriate completions, sometimes while producing similar gestures themselves (McCafferty, 2002;Mori & Hayashi, 2006). Similarly, there is evidence from classroom research that L2 learners spontaneously produce representational gestures to convey aspects of L2 word meaning that they cannot express verbally (Smotrova & Lantolf, 2013). This research showed that instructors utilized learners' spontaneous gestures by integrating them into their corrective feedback, and learners reused the gestures in conjunction with corrected target language speech, demonstrating improved understanding.…”

4. Motion for the other through motion for the self: The conceptual complexities of giving-directions for advanced Spanish heritage learners

“…Gesture studies are gradually becoming more prominent in the field of SLA (Lantolf 2010;McCafferty 2004McCafferty , 2006McCafferty and Stam 2008;Smotrova and Lantolf 2013). A growing number of studies on language, cognition, and thinkingfor-speaking have also analyzed how path and/or manner of motion is conveyed through gesture in motion events (Brown 2015;Hendriks and Hickmann 2015;Brown and Gullberg 2008;Choi and Lantolf 2008;Chui 2011;Gullberg et al 2008;McNeill, 2001;Özyürek, et al 2008;Pavlenko and Volynski 2015).…”

L2 Vocabulary Teaching with Student- and Teacher-Generated Gestures: A Classroom Perspective

“…Teachers naturally use gestures to teach the meaning of new words, and these form an important component of comprehensible input for learners (Smotrova & Lantolf, 2013). In addition to helping with meaning, a more explicit use of gestures can help learners retain the phonological form of words.…”