How much bodily engagement does language learning need? Insights, trends and pedagogical implications.

The connection between body and language has inspired research in many disciplines. More recently, the combination of insights from embodied cognition research and cognitive linguistics has proven very successful for language teaching (e.g. the use of gestures or bodily movements to illustrate grammar principles or word meaning). Empirical research has pointed to some factors that might modulate the effectiveness of such embodied language teaching practices such as the degree of bodily engagement and the task imperativeness. The presentation will give an overview of the most recent advances in the field and discuss pedagogical implications for teaching