The Role of Teachers’ Gestures and Invitations to Repeat in Deaf Children's Lexical Learning

Introduction: Deaf children born to hearing parents can continue to have problems learning new words (lexical learning) and putting words together when starting nursery class in school, notwithstanding accurate early diagnosis and vastly improved hearing technology (digital hearing aids, cochlear implants). Interactions between teachers and deaf children include verbal and nonverbal turn components, in particular, representational (iconic) gestures. While frequency of gesture use by teachers is well understood, there is little sequential analysis of concurrent verbal and nonverbal (co-speech) turns in classroom interactions. This article addresses the literature gap by investigating how representational gesture functions as a turn resource for teachers during the moment-by-moment accomplishment of lexical learning. Method: Conversation analysis was applied to video interaction data of specialist teachers and their deaf pupils (aged 3–4 years) interacting during one-to-one spoken language enrichment sessions in the Deaf Provision nursery class of a mainstream primary school in London. Results: Analysis shows how teachers employ representational gesture to craft opportunities for lexical learning by inviting the child to repeat. Gestural repetition is shown to accomplish lexical repair and to progress talk through new lexical learning. Conclusion: The flexibility of gesture as an interactional resource is highlighted. It is shown to be subtly employed to support moments when the child's poorly intelligible speech threatens the progression of talk and establishment of shared meaning needed to transact learning. Furthermore, teachers give primacy to gesture over speech to “bootstrap” these learning opportunities. Findings have impact for teachers by showcasing their specialist yet natural interactional strategies that maximize language learning. This could also benefit their further training and will be of interest to parents.