This paper deals with the role of hand gestures and other types of visible behavior (eye gaze, body posture, facial expressions etc.) in task-based classroom interaction. In the past few years, more and more attention has been paid to the crucial role of gestures in L2 learning, as previous research has shown a strong relationship between gesture use and grammar, vocabulary, or prosody (Gullberg, 2006; Huang et al., 2019; McCafferty, 2006). In addition, studies in Conversation Analysis and interaction research (e.g. Mondada, 2019 Pekarek-Doehler, 2018; Sacks et al., 1974) have further grounded the notion of L2 competence as socially-situated and embedded within interactional practices, which closely echoes the concept of "interactional competence" (IC) (Galaczi, 2014; Hall et al., 2011) which focuses on the ability to manage several aspects of the interaction (e.g. topic management, interactive listening, repair etc.). Further in line with this notion of IC, our goal is to explore the interactional role of gestures in L2 learning to achieve and maintain intersubjectivity during peer interactions. Learning a second language does not only require linguistic skills, but interactional ones as well to maintain the coherence and cohesion of the exchange. For instance, Gullberg (2011), who has worked extensively on communication strategies in L2 production, described how learners dealt with interaction-related difficulties by exploiting the full range of multimodal resources they had at their disposal.
In line with this body of work, the present empirical study is based on a longitudinal corpus of video-recorded conversations between 24 pairs of secondary school students in ESL classrooms in France (Manoïlov, 2017). The 48 students were recorded while performing information tasks at the beginning and end of the school year. Specific attention is paid to the emergence of gestures within the sequential development of the exchange, as well as shifts in posture and gaze direction to signal and overcome communication problems. Analyses reveal instances of joint gesture production, with interactive pointing gestures, among others, used to seek agreement and understanding, during which peers co-achieve the task at hand.
References
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