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

Laura M. Morett

54 citations0/0 files storedModern Language Journal

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Second Language Acquisition and Learning EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning Hand Gesture Recognition Systems

Abstract

In the interest of clarifying how gesture facilitates L2 word learning, the current study investigates gesture's influence on three interrelated cognitive processes subserving L2 word learning: communication, encoding, and recall. Individuals unfamiliar with Hungarian learned 20 Hungarian words that were either accompanied or unaccompanied by gestures depicting their referents, and taught the meanings of the words to interlocutors who were also unfamiliar with Hungarian. All participants were then tested for their recall of target words. The results show that gesture facilitates all three cognitive processes, supporting the predictions of McNeill's (2005) growth point theory. Furthermore, the results indicate that gesture production facilitates all of the cognitive processes more effectively than gesture viewing. Overall, the results demonstrate that gesture can serve as an effective cognitive aid for L2 word learning by beginning L2 learners, particularly in task‐focused, conversational settings.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 54 citations exist upstream.

References

1962Thought and language 2004Gesture Visible Action as Utterance 1998The phonological loop as a language learning device.2005Gesture and Thought 2003What does cross-linguistic variation in semantic coordination of speech and gesture reveal?: Evidence for an interface representation of spatial thinking and speaking 2009A Guide to Doing Statistics in Second Language Research Using SPSS 1991Phonological short-term memory and foreign-language vocabulary learning 2005The Role of Gestures and Facial Cues in Second Language Listening Comprehension

Cited by

2017In hand and in mind: Effects of gesture production and viewing on second language word learning 2018Learning nouns and verbs in a foreign language: The role of gestures 2017Gesture, meaning, and thinking-for-teaching in unplanned vocabulary explanations 2019The Power of an Image: Images, Not Glosses, Enhance Learning of Concrete L2 Words in Beginning Learners 2023Investigating the effects of varying Accelerative Integrated Method instruction on spoken recall accuracy: a case study with junior primary learners of French

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.