Gestures and Modeling in EFL Teaching
If you are teaching EFL (English as Foreign Language), especially beginners, your instructions may not always be understood fully. There might be miss-interpretation on your communication due to the limited language mastery of your EFL students. Furthermore, it is common sense that students in an EFL classroom may not always understand what their teacher wants them to do when given directions in English.
teaching EFL
Apparently, your students are there to learn English and will not get every nuance of your requests. Therefore, you somehow you need to translate your English instruction into your students’ first language (L1). However, that can be ineffective because learning language means giving as much as exposure to your students with the target language. Hence, the best way to deal with that is by still using English for your instruction but accompanying your instruction with modeling, gestures and cueing.
A professional EFL teacher will use their body to help their EFL students understand their instruction and explanation. Modeling is doing what you want your students to do; modeling is purposed to show them what is wanted. Modeling will also help give students additional information about what they want them to do. Additionally, you can also use gesture (to prompt behaviors) and cue in your EFL teaching. Modeling, gesturing, and cueing provide assistance to the students.
Making your students able to master and use the target language you are teaching is the most important point and of course, you don’t want to get stuck in a lesson with students not knowing what to do. Therefore, always model any activity first, gesture to show students when you want them to respond chorally; for instance: when you instruct your students to listen, put your hands behind your ear; as you ask them to repeat, move your hands away from your mouth; and you can also give cues by pointing to target language on the marker board.
However, you have to be able to control the use of your gesture and modeling. Give only the amount of gestures and cueing needed and withdraw it as soon as you can. Don not make your students dependent on focus only on your gesture and modeling without paying attention on the target language taught. You can always increase usage when needed and reduce it as the students seem to understand what is requested of them.
Gesture, modeling and cueing can be used as effective tools to make your class go much more smoothly. Nevertheless, always be aware of any cultural differences in gestures because for sure you do not want to use taboo or inappropriate gestures on your teaching, do you? In many cultures, you are not allowed to point with a finger because it is quite rude as is gesturing with your palm facing up versus down. The best thing to do is to recognize cultures, tradition, and norms in the country in which you will teach in.
