Languages, Volume 11, Issue 3
2026 March - 29 articles
Cover Story: This review synthesizes 24 empirical studies examining how hand gestures support second language phonetic learning. Drawing on the embodied cognition framework, the review shows that gestural training yields the strongest benefits for speech production and the learning of suprasegmental features. At the segmental level, the effectiveness of gestural training depends on gesture–sound consistency and the visual saliency of the targeted feature. However, benefits for perceptual learning and generalization effects remain inconsistent. Moreover, performing gestures is not always more helpful than merely observing gestures. The review calls for longitudinal, classroom-based, and neurophysiological research to fully unpack how the body–mind connections drive L2 speech learning. View this paper
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Languages - ISSN 2226-471X