ERIC Number: EJ1176862
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2016
Pages: 5
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-1936-7384
EISSN: N/A
Co-Teachers' Coordinated Gestures as Resources for Giving Instructions in the EFL Classroom
Song, Gahye
Working Papers in TESOL & Applied Linguistics, v16 n2 p51-55 2016
Giving instructions for a classroom activity can be a tricky business in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom, especially when the students' proficiency level is low and the instruction is composed of multiple steps. Teachers may depend on linguistic resources only so far as students can understand the words and grammar used, which limits the scope of verbal communication in giving instructions. When an instruction is composed of multiple steps, signaling when to carry out an individual component in the instruction may also require additional interactional work. Gesture as a component of classroom management technique, e.g., regulating turn-taking traffic between a teacher's instruction-giving and students' response production, has rarely been discussed in the literature so far. This short analysis illustrates one way through which two co-teachers signal the completion of instruction-giving and elicit students' response to the instruction (i.e., compliance). It will be shown that co-teachers' simultaneous gesturing, with or without accompanying verbal instruction, adds clarity to the instruction as something to be responded to immediately. In other words, when co-teachers produce the same gesture simultaneously, students tend to take it as a signal to carry out the instructed action. The data were taken from a teaching demonstration session video-taped in a second-grade classroom in South Korea.
Descriptors: English (Second Language), Second Language Instruction, Nonverbal Communication, Team Teaching, Teaching Methods, Responses, Verbal Communication, Grade 2, Elementary School Teachers, Foreign Countries, Video Technology, Interpersonal Communication
Teachers College, Columbia University. 525 West 120th Street, New York, NY 10027. e-mail: tcwebjournal@tc.columbia.edu; Web site: https://tesolal.columbia.edu/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Grade 2
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: South Korea
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A