Study On Mediation And Gesticulation From The Perspective Of Sociocultural Theory

As the development of English teaching in China, the roles of language teachers,which are regarded as the transmitters of knowledge, have changed gradually. Andthe mediation roles of teachers attract great attention. Vygotsky and Feuerstein, theadvocators of mediation theory, suggest that language teachers need to chooseeffective mediation tools which can provide appropriate stimulation andcomprehensible input for language learners, and help them become autonomouslanguage learners.During our English teaching in classroom, some teachers usually pay great attentionto whether students can write correctly or speak fluently. In the process of learningforeign language, teachers tend to communicate with students by means of verbalmethods. However, teachers need to use another communication means, that is,nonverbal communication, which has an active effect in classroom teaching.Aberemile proposed that we spoke with our vocal organs, but we conversed with ourwhole body. So it is necessary to focus on the functions of nonverbalcommunications in the process of foreign language learning. And many researchersbegan to focus on the way of using proper body language to help foreign languagelearners study new knowledge well.The purpose of the research is to explore the effect of gesticulation as a kind ofnonverbal communication in the process of language learning. The experiment isbased on the perspective of sociocultural theory. The author randomly selects onehundred students in Daqing Medical College to participate the experiment and theyare divided into two groups. One group learns English knowledge with the help ofgesticulation used in the process of learning, while the other group studies Englishknowledge without the help of any means of nonverbal communication. The resultsof the experiment demonstrate that gesticulation has advantageous effect in helpinglearners of language to master new knowledge more efficiently. And the results ofgender difference analysis show that there is no significant difference of the scores ofmale and female in English vocabulary learning, so both male and female can learn well in applying and mastering the basic language knowledge. Besides, the role ofteacher as a mediator is also very important.According to the experiment results and related theories, we could present someimplications for foreign language learning and teaching. The task of language teacheras mediator is to select appropriate means of mediation to help students learn foreignlanguage better and improve their abilities of language learning. In addition, theresearch may further enrich teachers’ understanding about the effect of nonverbalcommunication in language teaching, the relationship between second languageacquisition and sociocultural theory, and finally encourage language teachers to thinkabout their new roles as mediators.