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Joint Seminar I Gesture for collaboration and affective alignment in the language classroom

Seminars / Lectures / Workshops

10NovSeminar_1000x540
  • Date

    10 Nov 2021

  • Organiser

    Department of English and Communication

  • Time

    17:00 - 18:00

  • Venue

    Zoom  

Speaker

Dr Tetyana (Tania) Smotrova

Remarks

This event is jointly organized with the International Society for Gesture Studies - Hong Kong.

Summary

Recent decades have seen an increasing research interest in the role of gesture in the process of teaching-and-learning occurring in the classroom (e.g., Pozzer-Ardenghi & Roth, 2008; Rosborough, 2011; Zhao, 2007). These studies indicate that in their classroom interactions, teachers and students tend to use gesture collaboratively in discussing different concepts and meanings (e.g., Eskildsen & Wagner, 2013; Matsumoto & Dobs, 2017; Smotrova & Lantolf, 2013). Specifically, they imitate each other’s gestures, producing gestural repetitions termed by McNeill (1992; 2005) as “catchments”. Classroom studies show that such catchments fulfil a range of functions that make them conducive to learning. They help to maintain coherence of classroom discourse, establish shared understandings, and build rapport and affective alignment. These functions of catchments as gestural imitations are important because, according to Vygotsky (1987), imitation is a primary mechanism for learning, which aligns with findings on mirror neurons (e. g. Rizzolatti & Craighero, 2004). Indeed, studies show that students appropriate teacher gesture and use it as a tool for their learning (e.g., van Compernolle & Smotrova, 2014; Smotrova, 2017). Interestingly, teachers also appropriate student gesture and use it as a pedagogical tool (Rosborough, 2011). These findings point to the importance of teacher-student gestures in the process of their collaboration on learning tasks in the classroom.

This presentation will overview the major studies that reveal the collaborative and affective functions of gesture in classroom interactions (with the focus on gestural catchments) and present the most illustrative cases reflecting these functions. It will conclude with recommendations for language educators with regards to pedagogical uses of gesture.

Keynote Speaker

Dr Tetyana (Tania) Smotrova

Centre for English Language Communication, National University of Singapore

Dr Tetyana (Tania) Smotrova (PhD, the Pennsylvania State University) is a lecturer at the National University of Singapore. Her research interests include gesture, multimodality, classroom interaction, second language acquisition, academic writing, and ESP. She has taught EFL, ESL, and ESP in Eastern Europe, the U.S., and South-East Asia. Her gesture research focuses on a moment-to-moment microanalysis of teacher and student use of gesture in classroom interactions and its implications for learning. She has published her research in such major Applied Linguistics journals as “TESOL Quarterly”, “Journal of Pragmatics”, “The Modern Language Journal”, and others.

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