Gesture and the Negotiation of Meaning in a Second Language Classroom

This chapter will examine the differences in the negotiation of meaning for language learners in didactic (teaching) and dyadic (conversational) situations (also see Kida and Faraco 2002). Our task in this chapter is to describe aspects of nonverbal interaction in the second language (L2)—notably gesture, gaze, and prosody, as initiating a “learning sequence,” wherein participants momentarily divert from the topic at hand in order to deal with a communication problem.