A Study Of The Relationship Between Language And Gesture Use In The Oral Production Of Chinese EFL Learners

Gesture,which accompanies speech for expressing meaning as well as reflecting thinking process(McNeill,1992),is a new research issue in the realm of second language acquisition(SLA)in recent decades.Gesture has important interpersonal as well as intrapersonal functions during L2 speech.That is,gestures are used to improve communicative efficiency between speakers and listeners and are considered as a mediate tool to make the inner mental process visible.Therefore gesture and speech are viewed as two aspects of one unity,which is comprised of symbolic imagery and linguistic structure.Meanwhile,as second language learning is a developmental process,gesture has a close relationship with language proficiency.The present study explores the possible connection between gesture use and language proficiency as well as gesture use in different languages(L2 versus L1).58 Chinese learners of English were divided into three groups according to their second language proficiency: 21 advanced speakers,21 intermediate speakers and 16 beginning speakers.Verbal and nonverbal data were collected by a cartoon storytelling task in Chinese(L1)and English(L2)in order to examine the following two research questions:1.What is the relationship between gesture use and L2 proficiency in English storytelling?2.How are gestures related to different languages(L1 & L2)?The relationship between gesture use and language(two research questions)are discussed based on the interpersonal as well as intrapersonal functions of gestures.The major findings are summarized as follows:In English narration,first of all,speakers with higher L2 proficiency produced more iconic and metaphoric gestures.With better L2 knowledge,they were good at using the multimodal way,consisting of gesture and speech,to externalize their thinking process and enhance speech meaning.However,learners with lower L2 proficiency tended to use iconic and metaphoric gestures to fill their linguistic gaps.Moreover,beginning learners used more deictic gestures than intermediate andadvanced learners to solve vocabulary as well as grammatical problems.In addition,speakers with lower L2 proficiency tended to use beats along with syllables to materialize speech prosody.The visible and concretized movements helped them control mental process easily and remedy the limitations of their second language competence.Secondly,for the comparison of gesture use in L1 and L2,speakers used more gestures in Chinese than in English.Speakers expressed their thought easily in L1 narration than in L2 through the combination of speech and gesture.However,the gesture use in English was constrained due to second language anxiety,especially for lower proficiency speakers.Besides,beats occurred more frequently in English narration.Except for externalizing the prosody of spoken English to control it,speakers used beats more frequently in English because beats can occur in any narrative level.The present study has both theoretical and pedagogical significance.It offers strong evidence to espouse the speech-gesture dialectic theory and contributes to the understanding of the relationship among gesture,speech and thought.The findings of this study confirm that gesture is an integral part of language and can improve communicative efficiency and reveal speakers’ thought.Furthermore,the current study takes individual difference of gesture use in L1 into account to improve the research methodology of gesture use.The findings also suggest that English teacher can use gestures in class instruction to help students understand better.Teachers can lead students to pay more attention to gestures in language use.