Gestures as Scaffolding to Learn Vocabulary in a Foreign Language

This review paper investigates the influence of gestures on foreign language (FL) vocabulary learning through a series of experiments conducted in our laboratory. The manipulation of the gesture-word relationship was a consistent factor across the studies. Firstly, we examined the impact of gestures on noun and verb learning. The results revealed that participants exhibited better learning outcomes when FL words were accompanied by congruent gestures compared to a no gesture condition. This suggests that gestures have a positive effect on FL learning when there is a meaningful connection between the words and the accompanying gestures. However, in general, the recall of words in conditions where gestures were incongruent or lacked meaning was lower than in the no gesture condition. This indicates that under certain circumstances, gestures may have a detrimental impact on FL learning. We analyzed these findings in terms of their implications for facilitating or interfering with FL acquisition. Secondly, we addressed the question of whether individuals need to physically perform the gestures themselves to observe the effects of gestures on vocabulary learning. To explore this, participants were divided into two experimental groups. In one group, participants learned the words by actively performing the gestures ("do" learning group), while the other group simply observed the gestures performed by others ("see" learning group). The processing of congruent gestures facilitated the recall of FL words in both the "see" and "do" learning groups. However, the interference effect associated with processing incongruent gestures was more pronounced in the "see" learning group than in the "do" learning group. Thus, the performance of gestures appears to mitigate the negative impact that gestures may have on the acquisition of FL vocabulary. In conclusion, our findings suggest that iconic gestures can serve as an effective tool for learning vocabulary in a FL, particularly when the gestures align with the meaning of the words. Furthermore, the active performance of gestures helps counteract the negative effects associated with inconsistencies between gestures and word meanings. Consequently, if a choice must be made, a FL learning strategy in which learners acquire words while making gestures congruent with their meaning would be highly desirable.