How do teachers adapt their multimodal behaviors when addressing L2 learners? An exploratory study

Foreigner talk (FT) is a specific type of communicative adaptation in which L1 speakers (L1S) adapt their language use when interacting with L2 speakers (L2S). Whereas it has convincingly been shown that FT manifested itself at various levels of linguistic analysis (a.o. Long 1981;Roche 1998; Rodriguez-Cuadrado, Baus & Costa 2018; Woolridge 2001), recent research in the domain of gesture studies has suggested that simplification strategies could also be observed in hyperforms of bodily behavior, such as big or slow gestures and sustained eye gaze (a.o. Adams 1998, Gullberg 2011). This multimodal realization of foreigner talk has also been confirmed by Prové, Perrez & Oben (2022) who observed that L1S interacting with L2S produced hand gestures that were larger, performed faster, and that covered a larger trajectory.
In this context, the present exploratory study aims at analyzing the multimodal
realization of FT in classroom interactions. We are more specifically studying to what extent L1 teachers adapt their bodily behavior when addressing L2 students.
To do so, we are using a within design comparing one L1 teacher respectively engaged
in interactions with L2 students (experimental group) and L1 students (control group). We
recorded a two-hour class given by a L1 French speaker to L2 students with an A2-level and we are going to record the same teacher teaching L1 students soon. Our coding grid is based on Tellier & Stam (2019). The analysis at the speech level consists of identifying the verbal strategy (e.g., determining whether the teacher is giving a definition, an example, linguistic information), the concept that is described by the utterance, the type of interaction (teacher to: one student, several students or the whole classroom) and the teacher space (i.e., where they stand in the classroom: front center, front left, close to student etc.) (Tellier & Stam 2019). As for the gestural level, we determine the gestures types (i.e., iconic, metaphoric, deictic, beat, emblem, interactive, butterworth, aborted), the gesture function (i.e. informing, assessing, managing) the gesture space (i.e., center, center center, periphery, extreme periphery, extended arm in front) and the gesture meaning (McNeill 1992, Tellier & Stam 2019).
So far, the first 23 minutes and 30 seconds have been analyzed, that is to say, 2.430
words and 206 gestures. Results show that the teacher produced 8.76 gestures per minute. The primary dimension of their gestures is iconic (31%) followed by deictic (21%) and interactive (20%). They tend to use gesture to inform (65%) and more specifically to give lexicalinformation. In addition, her iconic gestures tend to last longer than other gestures types (2.37 seconds whereas the average gesture duration is 1.8 seconds). She tends to produce iconic gestures in the extreme periphery (44%) more often than other gestures types. To conclude, we can say that there is a prominent use of larger iconic gestures in L1-L2 interactions and that last longer. The future analysis of L1-L1 data will make it possible to observe to what extent these characteristics are typical of L1-L2 interactions and to specify how foreigner talk manifests itself in multimodal communication in this context.