“Writing in the Air!”: The Role of Gestures in Early Childhood Heritage Language Learning

In this paper, I drew upon the theoretical perspectives on gestures to explore how a teacher used gestures for instructional activities in an early childhood Chinese heritage language classroom. The qualitative data included observations, video recordings of class conversations, and artifacts provided by the participants. All the data were collected from the early childhood classroom at a Chinese heritage language school in a city in the southwestern United States city. The findings show how the teacher used gestures to “write” each Chinese character to prepare the children for their writing practices. The findings also show that the teacher strategically displayed knowledge and engaged the children in meaning-making and reviewing previous lessons through different types of gestures. The conclusions include a review of the teacher’s use of gestures for instructional purposes, such as facilitating meaning-making and preparing the young heritage language learners for their writing practice. The conclusions also included the significance of the research by highlighting the contribution to early childhood heritage language education. Specifically, the study helps contribute to the literature on the use of gestures for supporting children’s language learning and provides recommendations for heritage language teachers to consider using different gestures as pedagogical methods.