Yes indeed…gestures are physical movements expressing verbal speech.  You know….giving someone a thumbs up or an Okay sign….fist in the air to show urgency…and even  vulgar hand gestures succinctly convey verbal meaning!  So, why should we be using our hands to support our verbal cues?  To enhance communication of course!  Communication is both the sharing and receiving of communication, so why not make sharing the information more efficient?  That is what a gesture does!  Makes learning/understanding efficient!

One picture may be worth a thousand words, but one gesture is a time-saving and almost instantaneous representation of  verbal explanation.  A baby may not be able to ‘tell their mother that the milk is too hot, but with a learned gesture (or the iconic shake of the hand in front of mouth), the baby can efficiently (before a burn occurs) tell the mother that the milk is too hot without words.

Regarding boosting Language Acquisition, it is so beneficial to learn a language through the addition of gestures supporting vocabulary.  Teaching the word “cut” or “scissors” could be supported with a hand movement of two fingers taking the action of the cutting.  Efficient.  It is just good teaching–it supports verbal language understanding.   Would you really want to make sure a student master the word scissors before teaching them how to use them?

*Iconic gestures can differ culturally

It just so happens this afternoon, I sat down with a parent to talk about her “Home Language Plan”, and the multi-language-literacy goals she envisions for her children.  She herself has two mother tongues (Spanish-English), her husband speaks German, and the language they speak to each other is English.  However, each parent speaks their mother tongues to their children.  (Children speak Spanish with mom, German with dad, and learn English at school.)  This is a lot to juggle.   This  parent wanted to meet to “check her plan out” with me to see if she was on the right track (which she was) and to gain strategies to support their mother tongues.

You see, our EAL team has pushed for years to educate parents that speaking their strongest language and mother tongue is a value, an asset to our International community.  And now?  The tables have turned and all of the EAL team’s hard work has paid off, because, parents now seek us out to refine their own strategies to improve their child’s multilingual potential.  I wonder what other schools do to help parents understand the value of the parents speaking to their young children in their native tongue?

Parent + Teacher + Research & Education = long time benefits.  Good teamwork.  We are so much better together.