Participation in the EFL Classrooms: Relationships between the Functions of Teacher’s Embodied Actions and Learners' Embodied Reactions

Document Type : research article

Authors

shiraz university

Abstract

Vygotsky (1978) uses the example of a child's gesture, arguing that finger-pointing presents an interpersonal relationship, and an intrapersonal relationship occur only after an internalization. The purpose of this study was to investigate the discourse and corresponding gestures at a foreign language university general English course using Socio-cultural theory as a theoretical framework. This study used a qualitative research methodology. The instruments used in the current research included: a questionnaire, two video-recordings, student surveys, and a follow-up semi-structured teacher interview. Particularly, the observations were of the teacher in interaction with students concerning the subject matter. The teacher and students teaching was video-recorded for the first five weeks of a sixteen-week course, meeting twice per week for one hour and thirty seconds. The teacher’s gestures were analyzed according to the transcription conventions developed by McNeill (1992). The findings are discussed in relation to the teacher’s embodied practices. The data revealed that the teacher gestured and mimetically illustrated in order to concretize the language. The gestures observed were organized into different linguistic categories of grammar and lexis on the basis of the lessons of the course- book. So, not only the gesture types, but also the functions, are discussed. This organization reinforces the notion that the instructor was trying to concretize the language and codify it.

Keywords

References

 Allen, L. Q. (1995). The effects of emblematic gestures on the development and access of mental representations of French expressions. Modern Language Journal, 79(4), 521–529.
Allen, L. Q. (2000). Nonverbal accommodations in foreign language teacher talk. Applied Language Learning, 11, 155–176.
Ashwin, T.S., & Reddy Guddeti, R.M. (2020). Affective database for e-learning and classroom environments using Indian students’ faces, hand gestures and body postures. Future Generation Computer Systems, 108, 334–348.
Celce-Murcia, M. (1987). Teaching pronunciation as communication. In J. Morley (Ed.), Current perspectives on pronunciation: Practices anchored in theory (pp. 5-12). Washington, DC: TESOL.
Dahl, T.L., & Ludvigsen, S (2014). How I See What You're Saying: The Role of Gestures in Native and Foreign Language Listening Comprehension. The Modern Language Journal, 98, 813-833. 
Faraco, M., & Kida, T. (2008). Gesture and the negotiation of meaning in the second language classroom. In S. G. McCafferty & G. Stam (Eds.), Gesture: Second language acquisition and classroom research (pp. 280-297). New York: Routledge.
Goldin-Meadow, S. (1999). The role of gesture in communication and thinking. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 3, 419-429.
Gullberg, M. (1998). Gesture as a communication strategy in second language discourse: A study of learners of French and Swedish. Lund, Sweden: Lund University.
Hauge, Elizabeth (2000). The Role of Gesture in British ELT in a University Setting. Southampton:Faculty of Social Sciences.
Hudson, N. Teacher gesture in a post-secondary English as a second language classroom: A sociocultural approach (2011). UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. 1044.
 https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/thesesdissertations/1044
Kendon, A. (1990). Conducting interaction: Patterns of behavior in focused encounters. Cambridge: Cambridge University.
Kita, S. (1993). Language and thought interface: A study of spontaneous gestures and Japanese mimetics. Doctoral dissertation, Department of Psychology and Department of Linguistics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL.
Lantolf, J. P., & Appel, G. (1994). Vygotskian approaches to second language research. Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University.
Lazaraton, A. (2004). Gesture and speech in the vocabulary explanations of one ESL teacher: A microanalytic inquiry. Language Learning, 54, 79-117.
Liu, Q., Zhang, N., Chen, W., Wang, Q., Yuan, Y., & Xie, K. (2020). Categorizing teachers’ gestures in classroom teaching: from the perspective of multiple representations. Social Semiotics, 1-21.
Iizuka, T., Nakatsukasa, K., & Braver, A. (2020). The efficacy of gesture on second language pronunciation: An exploratory study of handclapping as a classroom instructional tool. Language Learning, 70, 1–37. 
Luria, A. R. (1979). The making of mind: a personal account of Soviet psychology. M. Cole & S. Cole (Eds.). Cambridge: Harvard University.
Luria, A. R. (1982). Language and cognition. J. V. Wertsch (Ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Matsumoto,Y., & Canagarajah, S. (2020). The use of gesture, gesture hold, and gaze in trouble-in talk among multilingual interlocutors in an English as a lingua franca context. Journal of Pragmatics,169, 245-267. 
Matsumoto, Y. & Dobs, A.M. (2016). Pedagogical gestures as interactional resources for teaching and learning tense and aspect in the ESL grammar classroom. Language Learning, 67, 1–36.
McCafferty, S. G. (2008b). Mimesis and second language acquisition: A sociocultural perspective. SSLA, 30, 147-167.
McNeill, D. (1992). Hand and mind: What the hands reveal about thought. Chicago: University of Chicago.
Mohan, B., & Helmer, S. (1988). Context and second language development: Preschoolers' comprehension gestures. Applied Linguistics, 9, 275-292.
Mondada, Lorenza. (2014). The local constitution of multimodal resources for social interaction. J. Pragmat. 65, 137-156.
Newman, F., & Holzman, L. (1993). Lev Vygotsky: Revolutionary scientist. New York: Routledge.
Nobe, S. (1993). Cognitive processes of speaking and gesturing: A comparison between first language speakers and foreign language speakers. MSc Thesis, University of Chicago.
Roth, W.-M. (2001). Gestures: Their role in teaching and learning. Review of Educational Research, 71, 365-392.
Safadi, M., & Valentine, C. A. (1988). Emblematic gestures among Hebrew speakers in Israel. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 4, 327-361.
Sato, R. (2020). Gestures in EFL classroom: Their relations with complexity, accuracy, and fluency in EFL teachers’ L2 utterances. System, 89, 1-13.
Schegloff, E. A. (1984). On some gestures' relation to talk. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 266-296). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University.
Seyfeddinipur, M., & Kita, S. (2001). Gestures and disfluencies in speech. In C. Cavé, I. Guaïtella, & S. Santi (Eds.), Oralité et gestualité. Interaction et comportements multimodaux dans la communication (pp. 266-270). Actes du colloque ORAGE 2001, Aix-en-Provence, 18-22 June 2001. Paris: l’Harmattan.
Sime, D. (2006). What do learners make of teachers' gestures in the language classroom? IRAL: International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 44, 211-230.
Smotrova, T. (2014). Instructional functions of speech and gesture in the L2 classroom. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Pennsylvania State University, University Park.
Stam, G. (1999). Speech and gesture: What changes first in L2 acquisition. Proceedings of the 2nd Language Research Forum, (LRF’ 99), University of Minneapolis.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge: Harvard University.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1986). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Warayet, A. (2011). Participation as a complex phenomenon in the EFL classroom. (Doctoral dissertation).Retrieved from
https://theses.ncl.ac.uk/dspace/bitstream/10443/1322/1/Warayet11.pdf
Wells, G. (1999). Dialogic inquiry: Toward a sociocultural practice and theory of education. Cambridge: Cambridge University.
Wilson, A. A., M. D. Boatright, and L. H. Melanie. (2014). Middle School Teachers’ Discipline-Specific Use of Gestures and Implications for Disciplinary Literacy Instruction. Journal of Literacy Research, 46 (2), 234–262.
Wolfgang, A., & Wolofsky, Z. (1991). The ability of new Canadians to decode gestures generated by Canadians of Anglo-Celtic background. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 15, 47-64.
Yuan, C., González-Fuente, S., Baills, F., & Prieto, P. (2019). Observing pitch gestures favors the learning of Spanish intonation by Mandarin speakers. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 41, 5–32.
Zhang, Y., Baills, F., & Prieto, P. (2018). Hand-clapping to the rhythm of newly learned words improves L2 pronunciation: Evidence from training Chinese adolescents with French words. Language Teaching Research, 24, 1-24.
Zhao, J. (2007). Metaphors and Gestures for Abstract Concepts in Academic English Writing. Ph.D. dissertation, Graduate College, University of Arizona.
Journal of Foreign Language Research
Volume 10, Issue 4
February 2021
Pages 752-775

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics