Resumen de Thinking with your hands: speech–gesture activity during an L2 awareness-raising task

Rémi A. van Compernolle, Lawrence Williams

• This article reports on a study of second language (L2) French learners’ self-generated use of gesture to think through and resolve a metalinguistic awareness-raising task during small-group work with an expert mediator. Although the use of gesture in L2 communication and pedagogy has recently received increasing attention, little research has explored L2 learners' use of gesture to mediate their own thinking in order to work through L2 problems. The present study responds to Lantolf's call for research investigating learners’ use of gestures to mediate their own learning. We present three excerpts of a video-recorded small-group awareness-raising task dealing with stylistic variation in French. We argue that the learners use gesture to mediate their thinking as they learn the concept of stylistic variation and develop an understanding of various form–meaning relationships. The focus on speech–gesture activity provides an enhanced view of these learners’ thinking processes that would not have been observable if speech alone had been considered.