Non-verbal resources and storytelling in second language classroom interaction

Abstract

This study examines a single fragment of second language classroom interaction where learners jointly participate in the activity of telling a story. When a student in a French class at tertiary level recounts a personal anecdote, an intricate fabric of coordinated non-verbal resources and talk develops: elaborate hand gestures, head movements, facial expressions, and gaze by the teller, laughter by the audience, all these cues appear organically linked and embedded in the ongoing talk. The recount itself involves language that is challenging for these learners of French. However, the teller succeeds in completing her story coherently and in an orderly fashion. Rooted in the multidisciplinary field of gesture studies (McNeill 1992, 2000, 2005; Kendon and Müller 2001; Kendon 2004), and working with an approach framed by conversation analysis and context analysis (Streeck 2009), the article describes in detail the unfolding of this telling and demonstrates that, through an interplay of multimodal resources, participants engage in cooperative talk and learning. It also argues for the need to consider hand gesture and non-verbal behaviours as a central component of L2 classroom interaction.