A Multimodal Analysis of Teachers Two-handed Gestures in English Vocabulary Teaching

Abstract

This paper selected a video from an English vocabulary teaching course and analyzed the teachers two-handed gestures, class discourse, and teaching procedures based on a multimodal discourse analysis framework. The researcher tried to explore the use of two-handed gestures in English vocabulary teaching classrooms and the relationship between gestures, teaching procedures, and discourse. It was concluded that beats are the most frequently-used gesture in this class which play an important communicative role in teaching as well as supports the teachers discourse. It appears frequently when the teachers discourse switches between two languages. This study enriches the corpus of pedagogical research applying multimodality and can provide a reference for the development of multimodal teaching.