How to use body language and gestures in EFL classes

Written by: Asst. Lect. Huda Abd ALkareem Zhgair

Bringing gestures and other body language into your English language classes is incredibly useful and also very fun. This article gives ideas on how to do so.

There are four main uses of body language and gestures in EFL classes:

• Teaching cultural differences related to body language (including gestures from other countries that they might not be familiar with, and gestures that they use which could be misunderstood or offensive elsewhere)

• Teaching students body language that will help with good communication more generally (such as gestures that can be used with typical presentation phrases to make the meaning clear and keep the attendees’ attention, and good and bad body language in job interviews)

• Getting students to use body language and gestures to learn other language aspects and components (grammar, vocabulary, functional language, phonics, pronunciation, etc.)

• The teacher using gestures and other body language to control the class, explain the activities, elicit language, etc.

For all of those four uses of body language, you will need to make sure that you can think of mimes, which are easy enough to mime and guess the meaning of. It is also best to have a plan B in case students cannot understand the suggested mime or cannot think of a mime themselves.