Gesture: Second Language Acquistion and Classroom Research / Edition 1

by Steven G. McCafferty, Gale Stam

Overview

This book demonstrates the vital connection between language and gesture, and why it is critical for research on second language acquisition to take into account the full spectrum of communicative phenomena. The study of gesture in applied linguistics is just beginning to come of age. This edited volume, the first of its kind, covers a broad range of concerns that are central to the field of SLA. The chapters focus on a variety of second-language contexts, including adult classroom and naturalistic learners, and represent learners from a variety of language and cultural backgrounds.

Gesture: Second Language Acquisition and Classroom Research is organized in five sections:

• Part I, Gesture and its L2 Applications, provides both an overview of gesture studies and a review of the L2 gesture research.
• Part II, Gesture and Making Meaning in the L2, offers three studies that all take an explicitly sociocultural view of the role of gesture in SLA.
• Part III, Gesture and Communication in the L2, focuses on the use and comprehension of gesture as an aspect of communication.
• Part IV, Gesture and Linguistic Structure in the L2, addresses the relationship between gesture and the acquisition of linguistic features, and how gesture relates to proficiency.
• Part V, Gesture and the L2 Classroom, considers teachers’ gestures, students’ gestures, and how students’ interpret teachers’ gestures.

Although there is a large body of research on gesture across a number of disciplines including anthropology, communications, psychology, sociology, and child development, to date there has been comparatively little investigation of gesture within applied linguistics. This volume provides readers unfamiliar with L2 gesture studies with a powerful new lens with which to view many aspects of language in use, language learning, and language teaching.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780805860528
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	03/24/2008
Series:	ESL & Applied Linguistics Professional Series
Pages:	340
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

McCafferty, Steven G.; Stam, Gale

Table of Contents

Contributors

Preface

I: INTRODUCTION TO GESTURE AND ITS L2 APPLICATIONS

1. Gesture Studies and Second Language Acquisition: A Review

Gale Stam and Steven G. McCafferty

2. Nonverbal Communication and Second Language Classrooms: A Review

Carla Chamberlin Quinlisk

II: GESTURE AND MEANING MAKING IN THE L2

3. Material Foundations for Second Language Acquisition: Gesture, Metaphor, and Internalization

Steven G. McCafferty

4. Embodiment as Self-Regulation in L2 Task Performance

Elizabeth Platt and Frank B. Brooks

5. The Dialectics of Gesture in the Construction of Meaning in Second Language Oral Narratives

Eduardo Negueruela and James P. Lantolf

III: GESTURE AND COMMUNICATION IN THE L2

6. Gesturally Enhanced Repeats in The Repair Turn: Communication Strategy Or Cognitive Language-Learning Tool?

David Olsher

7. Does Gesture Aid Discourse Comprehension in the L2?

Tsuyoshi Kida

8. Language Learner and Native Speaker Perceptions of Japanese Refusal Gestures Portrayed in Video

Nicholas O. Jungheim

IV: GESTURE AND LINGUISTIC STRUCTURE IN THE L2

9. A Helping Hand? Gestures, L2 Learners, and Grammar

Marianne Gullberg

10. Linguistic and Gestural Introduction of Ground Reference in L1 and L2 Narrative

Keiko Yoshioka

11. What Gestures Reveal About Second Language Acquisition

Gale Stam

V: GESTURE AND THE L2 CLASSROOM

12. "Because Of Her Gesture, It’s Very Easy To Understand" – Learners’ Perceptions of Teachers’ Gestures in the Foreign Language Class

Daniela Sime

13. Gesture and the Negotiation of Meaning in a Second Language Classroom

Martine Faraco and Tsuyoshi Kida

14. Expository Discourse in a Second Language Classroom: How Learners Use Gesture

Alexis Tabensky