Listening to a foreign language is hard, exhausting work – especially for low level students. Gestures are great for reducing the burden put on ESL students and speeding up your lessons. You can certainly survive as a teacher without a solid repertoire, but developing a good habit of using body language to support your speech will boost your lessons to the next level and make your ESL classroom management much easier.
Attention & Concentration are Exhaustible
Our ability to focus on something isn’t infinite. We can only concentrate for periods of time that are affected by factors such as our age, motivation, energy levels, the time of day, and how interesting and difficult something is. As a general rule children’s attention spans are weaker and shorter the younger they are. Their ability to focus is measured in just handfuls of minutes. Even when they find something fun and engaging they need moments of downtime to settle and restore themselves. The more difficult a task is then the shorter students are able to sustain their attention.
This is incredibly important for ESL teachers because even listening to us speak in English is taxing for students. In dozens of observations I’ve seen students zone out and act out against teachers who don’t manage and support their teacher talk well. Teachers can be silly and funny but their students inevitably act out and under-perform when they struggle to understand their teacher.
The Advantage of Gestures
Gestures make it easier for learners to understand us. This is especially important early in a child’s education journey and also when they’ve met a new teacher. Different accents, patterns of speech, and the lack of a relationship can make it harder for learners to understand their new teacher. In addition, we often find that the stronger students in a class have no trouble understanding the teacher, but weaker listeners easily fall behind. Gestures are great for smoothing the transition into an English only environment and supporting students who might struggle otherwise.
Teachers who use gestures effectively often find their classes run more smoothly and with fewer behavior problems. Kids pick up on instructions, feedback, and other cues much faster. In addition, weaker students are more likely to keep up and participate in class. Children who feel they can’t be successful in something quickly turn against it and those in charge. By using gestures we can keep them from falling behind, zoning out, and acting out.
Finally, gestures make you appear more visually interesting and energetic to students. This affects how engaging they perceive you to be.
Common Types of Gestures
There are a great variety of gestures you can use in an ESL class. Here’s a short sample;
Drilling
Use a gesture to signal to students when they should repeat after you. I like to point to my lips as I’m speaking and then point to the students when it’s their turn to repeat after me. Used consistently this helps reduce the lag between the teacher and students. Gestures also help students with volume and emotions drilling.
Instructions
The language in instructions can be really difficult for low level students, but gestures can ease the burden. For example, I like to indicate the size of groups with my fingers. I’ll have two or three split fingers join together to show students will work in pairs or groups of three. Five fingers closing into a fist means groups of five. Body language can also be used to tell students they’ll need to listen, speak, write, and more.
Praise
Common English praise phrases such as “Good job!” or “Excellent work!” are often unclear to young learners, but they often slip out of teachers’ mouths. Simple body language such as smiling, making warm eye contact, and giving a thumbs up helps students understand the gist of unfamiliar praise language and make it appear more genuine. It sounds obvious, but I’ve observed teachers saying “good job” with their face to board and back to the children hundreds of times. It went unnoticed by the children in almost every case.
Behavior Feedback
I often find that misbehaving students don’t respond well to verbal instructions to behave better. A common example is when three or four year old boys stand up and walk around in class. The teacher will tell them “sit down” but the child often looks at them blankly. By pointing to a rule board or card and saying “sit down” the added visual gesture helps weaker and distracted students understand what’s needed from them.
Asking Questions
I like to shrug my shoulders and partially raise my hands when I ask questions to low level students. It’s often difficult for them to know when the teacher is asking a question otherwise. The shrug is a helpful extra visual cue for them.
Presenting Language
Miming vocabulary and language is a great way to add meaning for students. I’ve seen teachers struggle to verbally explain concepts when a quick mime action would get the job done in seconds.
Signaling & Correcting Errors
Using your fingers is a great way to provide instant error correction when it’s needed. For example, if a student makes an error with “He like to eat pizza.” then I could hold up five fingers on my left hand. I’d then wiggle the index finger or point to it with my other hand. This quick visual cue lets students auto-correct without me breaking the pace of the lesson by writing on the board or adding more teacher talk time.
Use your fingers to quickly indicate errors.
Final Tips
- Make the gestures big. Children don’t do well with subtlety.
- Practice and use them consistently every lesson. The more familiar students are with your gestures then the more effective they are.
There’s a great variety of gestures for use in class and these were just a few. What gestures do you use with your students? Share in the comments below.
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