Gesture and Multimodality in Second Language Acquisition

Gale Stam (PhD, University of Chicago) is Professor Emerita at National Louis University, Chicago. Her research interests include language and culture, language and cognition, gesture and second language acquisition, and teachers' gestures. She has published articles on changes in thinking for speaking, the importance of looking at gesture in second language (L2) acquisition, gesture and lexical retrieval in an L2, and language teachers' gestures. She has co-edited two volumes on speech and gesture: one with McCafferty, Gesture: Second Language Acquisition and Classroom Research (2008) and the other with Ishino, Integrating Gestures: The Interdisciplinary Nature of Gesture ( 2011).

Kimberly (Buescher) Urbanski (PhD, Penn State University) is Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics in Applied Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. Her research interests include second language (L2) learning and teaching, L2 literacy, students' and teachers' use of gesture, French prepositions, and teacher education preparation. She has published on gesture research methodology, L2 French preposition pedagogy using cognitive linguistics and sociocultural theory, and L2 literacy pedagogy.