How a Tutor Uses Gesture for Scaffolding: A Case Study on L2 Tutee's Writing

Abstract

Recently, from the Vygotskyan socio-cultural perspective, second language (L2) researchers have paid growing attention to scaffolding and have argued that L2 learning is enhanced through experts' scaffolding. However, not much is known about how teacher gesture scaffolds L2 learners' writing and how teachers manipulate writing-oriented gestures (i.e., writing gestures and gestures interacting with pen and paper) for L2 scaffolding. Therefore, we conducted a descriptive case study to examine how one writing tutor utilizes gesture and manipulates pen and paper to scaffold the L2 writing of a college student at a low proficiency level. We video-taped, transcribed, and coded one 30 minutes' writing session. We found that the tutor employed gesture primarily for instructional scaffolding to explain L2 vocabulary or grammar to the learner and help her self-repair. The tutor also used gestures involving pen and paper to scaffold the L2 tutee's writing performance, elicit more engagement, and eventually establish intersubjectivity.

Funding

This work was supported by Anyang University Research Fund of 2015 and by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Research Fund of 2015.

Notes

¹ Intersubjectivity means “shared knowledge” used by “philosophers, sociologists, and psychologists” (Young, 2008, p. 102). Young (2008) showed a clear example through gestural interaction between a mother and a son. That is, when a mother is pointing to a front side by her index finger, her son gazes at the direction: “In order for her son to interpret his mother's sign, he has to take his mother's point of view” (p. 104).

² Here, we use gesture to mean co-speech gesture, including writing-oriented gestures (i.e., writing gestures and gestures interacting with handwritten paper).

³ The university offered tracked English courses based on students' TOEIC scores: basic (TOEIC scores <  449), intermediate (TOEIC scores 450–649), and advanced (TOEIC scores upper 650).

⁴ Cohen's kappa indicates the strength of agreement: .21–.40 =  fair agreement, .41–.60 =  moderate agreement, .61–.80 =  substantial agreement, and .81–1.00 =  almost perfect agreement (Ladis & Koch, 1977).

⁵ In Kim's (2010) study, advanced (almost native-like) L2 speakers produced 8 gestures per 100 words in contrast to 15 gestures per 100 words by intermediate L2 speakers. Compared with the low proficiency L2 learners' gesture rate, in this study we found that the tutor's gesture rate was much higher.