Lending a hand to speech

What is it about?

This study examines the effect of gestures on second language (L2) prosody and fluency in storytelling tasks. L2 learners commonly use gestures in face-to-face conversations and storytelling. Extensive research has shown that gestures benefit L2 word learning and recall, but it is still unclear whether gestures affect speech fluency and prosody. We compared a series of speech fluency and prosody measures across two storytelling tasks: task repetition and explicit instruction on the use of gestures. By analysing the use of gestures in these tasks, we provide insights into how gestures can help L2 fluency and intonation.

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