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When do teachers gesture?

Conditions affecting gesture production in video-mediated lexical explanations

ORCiD logo with link | University of Lille
Published online: 18 May 2026
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/aila.24060.hol
Abstract
Video-mediated interaction is becoming increasingly common in foreign language education (O’Dowd, R. (2023). Internationalising Higher Education and the Role of Virtual Exchange. Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), offering learners opportunities to develop oral skills through interaction with L1 speakers. Lexical explanation sequences are of particular interest in cognitive-interactionist research (Loewen, S., & Sato, M. (2018). Interaction and instructed second language acquisition. Language Teaching, 51(3), 285–329. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) because they engage learners in focusing on both form and meaning (Long, M. H., & Robinson, P. (1998). Focus on form: Theory, research, and practice. In C. Doughty, & J. Williams (Eds.), Focus on form in classroom second language acquisition (pp. 15–41). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar).
Gestures play a key role in language learning in general ( (2022). Gesture Helps Second and Foreign Language Learning and Teaching. In A. Morgenstern & S. Goldin-Meadow (Eds.), Gesture in Language: Development Across the Lifespan (p. 335–363). APA/Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), and in lexical acquisition in particular (Macedonia, M., Repetto, C., Ischebeck, A., & Mueller, K. (2019). Depth of Encoding Through Observed Gestures in Foreign Language Word Learning. Frontiers in Psychology, 101. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), both in face-to-face (Tellier, M., Stam, G., & Ghio, A. (2021). Handling language: How future language teachers adapt their gestures to their interlocutor. Gesture, 20(1), 30–62. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) and video-mediated contexts ( (2020). Le rôle des gestes dans les explications lexicales par visioconférence. TIPA. Travaux interdisciplinaires sur la parole et le langage, 361. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). However, webcam framing limits gesture visibility (Guichon, N., & Wigham, C. R. (2016). A semiotic perspective on webconferencing-supported language teaching. ReCALL, 28(1), 62–82. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), forcing teachers to adapt. While some research has examined gesture production during teacher- or learner-initiated negotiation in face-to-face settings (Inceoglu, S., & Loewen, S. (2022). Analyzing nonverbal corrective feedback. In G. Stam & K. Urbanski (Eds.), Gesture and Multimodality in Second Language Acquisition: A Research Guide (p. 26–47). Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), little is known about this relationship in video-mediated contexts.
This study addresses that gap by analyzing 305 lexical explanation sequences from the ISMAEL corpus (Guichon, N., & Tellier, M. (Eds.). (2017). Enseigner l’oral en ligne: Une approche multimodale. Les Éditions Didier. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), focusing on the relationship between gesture production by pre-service teachers and the initiator of the sequence, the presence of visible incomprehension, the type of lexical difficulty (comprehension vs. production), and the grammatical category of the lexical item. Results show that gestures are significantly more likely when learners visibly display incomprehension, and when the difficulty is related to comprehension. These findings highlight the importance of gesture use during video-mediated teaching, especially during lexical explanation sequences and in response to signs of learner incomprehension.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Theoretical framework
    • An interactionist approach to lexical explanation sequences
    • A multimodal approach to lexical explanation sequences
  • Methodology
    • Corpus
    • Transcription and annotation
    • Data analysis
  • 4.Results
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
References (78)
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