Gestures could make the difference between your ESL beginners getting what you’re trying to express or not. Visual cues really help things “click” in a student’s brain. For example, perhaps a word sounded familiar to one student but she couldn’t remember the meaning well — speaking the word while making a descriptive gesture will help her brain make the connection between language and action.
Additionally, it’ll also help your students acquire new vocabulary as it’ll lead your L2 learners to associating certain body movements or gestures with particular things. For example, if you can always use the exact same gesture when instructing “please sit down,” your ESL learners will end up becoming more accustomed to hearing the command and then sitting down. It doesn’t even matter if you omit the oral instruction from time to time. After a few repetitions, the gesture alone should do the trick.
Using gesture in the ESL classroom is also an excellent way of having more control over your class – in the future if your students become rowdy or a little too loud, you can simply use gestures without oral instruction to have them stand up, be quiet or even make groups