The study examines the teacher and student gesture employed in teaching and learning suprasegmental features of second language (L2) pronunciation such as syllabification, word stress, and rhythm. It presents microanalysis of video-recorded classroom interactions occurring in a beginner-level reading class in an intensive English program at a U.S. university. Results indicate that the teacher employed gesture as an instructional tool to facilitate the students' identification and production of syllables, word stress, and the rhythm of speech. This was accomplished through reiterative gestures, or catchments, which enabled the students to visualize and experience the intangible pronunciation phenomena. The students appropriated the teacher's gestures through creative imitation and employed them as a learning tool in the process of gaining control over the suprasegmental features of L2 pronunciation. The study has implications for L2 pedagogy, suggesting that teachers need to be made aware of the pedagogical uses of gesture as a mediational tool for teaching L2 pronunciation and be sensitized to attending to student gestures.
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.
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