There are many good reasons to learn a foreign language, but it’s not always easy to achieve a level of fluency that allows you to express yourself with ease. One study now claims that there’s a technique that could help you manage certain languages more easily: talking with your hands.

Researchers at Shanghai’s New York University examined the role gestures can play in the learning of languages that use lexical stress – that is, those that involve emphasising certain syllables more than others.

The experts wanted to determine whether hand gestures help learners better understand the specific intonation of such languages. To do this, they conducted a series of experiments with 124 native Chinese speakers, dividing them into four groups.

In one experiment, the study participants watched videos in which an actor made hand movements to visually illustrate the pronunciation of three-syllable English words. The gestures were more or less pronounced in each video, but didn’t always indicate the correct syllable to be stressed in English.

Depending on which group to which they were assigned, the volunteers would watch different videos. Before and after viewing, they were asked to take a test to determine whether they knew which syllable should be stressed orally for each English word.

It turns out that hand gestures generally helped the participants to understand the various lexical stress patterns of English. Notably, those who saw the video with more pronounced hand movements on the right syllable found it easier than others to understand the lexical stress of the language.

Speaking with New Scientist, the researchers concluded that gestures made participants 10-15% better at identifying the right syllable to stress in English.

These findings open up new prospects for learning modern languages, particularly those that require good intonation – which is good news for those hoping to improve their proficiency in the English language.