An Exploratory Study of Enactment and Movement Based Pedagogy in a Foreign Language Context

2022 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 19K13256
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Basic Section 02100:Foreign language education-related
• Research Institution: Hirosaki University
• Principal Investigator: BIRDSELL Brian 弘前大学, 教育推進機構, 准教授 (40646296)
• Project Period (FY): 2019-04-01 – 2023-03-31
• Keywords: embodied learning / enactment / phrasal verbs / vocabulary learning

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Embodied cognition has had a major impact in the fields of cognitive linguistics and education. It argues that cognition, including language comprehension, is grounded in the sensorimotor systems. Thus, learning language coupled with the action (i.e., gesture, enactment) has the potential to enhance the learning outcomes. Using a quasi-experimental design, this research project showed that when students learned English phrasal verbs accompanied by viewing others enact the meaning of them statistically outperformed students who learned them with L1 (Japanese) support. A second study was based on theories that show how physical movement (i.e., a simple bout of exercise) before a memory task facilities memory retention. Using a within-subjects design, this research project showed that walking before learning a set of English phrasal verbs improved the learning of them, compared to sitting and reading before learning them, for long-term memory, but not for short-term memory.

Free Research Field

外国語教育関連

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

この研究の学術的意義は、言語理解と身体的な動きの間に関連性があることを示す証拠を提供したことです。また、体を動かすことは身体の健康を増進するだけでなく、気分や記憶力を向上させる可能性があることを示している。

この研究の社会的意義は、学習者が座って座りっぱなしでいるときに学習するのが最適であるという仮定に挑戦している。むしろ、本研究の結果は、英語語彙の学習におけるジェスチャーの重要性を指摘し、学習前の動作が学習に最適な状態を作り出すことを示唆している。 要するに、学習前に身体を動かす機会を増やすことが重要であり、外国語の教室でより多くのジェスチャーを用いて、学習を最適化することが必要である。