This paper explores whether English-Mandarin bilingual children have mastered discourse skills and whether they show sensitivity to the discourse principle of information status of referents in their speech and gestures. We compare the speech and gestures produced by bilingual children to those produced by English- and Mandarin-speaking…

Gestures are often used while speaking to aid in the speaker's packaging of the verbal message and/or to aid the listener in decoding the message. The ways in which bilinguals use gestures are reviewed in this article. Researchers have predicted that bilinguals' gesture use is related to bilinguals' language proficiency. However, no clear pattern…

Previous studies have shown inconsistent results concerning bilinguals' use of gestures to compensate for reduced proficiency in their second language (L2). These results could be because of differing task demands. In this study, we asked 16 intermediate English L2 speakers (whose first language [L1] was Chinese) to watch a story and tell it back…

Investigated the influence of a talker's face (e.g., articulatory gestures) and voice, vocalic context, and word position in the training of Japanese and Korean English as a Second Language to identify American English /r/ and /l/. Findings revealed significant effects of training type, talker, word position, and vowel. Findings are compatible…