online language teaching: the application of socio-cultural thinking-for-speaking model

Slobin’s (2003) thinking-for-speaking (tfs) model, based on the sociocultural approach to second language acquisition, investigates learners’ ability to develop thinking through meanings available in the l2, with a special focus on the interaction between speech as the verbal carrier of meaning and gesture as the imagistic carriers of meaning. in the academic year 2019/2020, due to the covid-19 pandemic, online teaching was adopted in all stages of education. some of the platforms used for this purpose provide students with just the voice of the teacher and the students were deprived of video and gestures of the teacher. this study aimed to compare the efficiency of in-person (where students enjoy the teacher's gestures) and online (where students are deprived of the teacher's gestures) classes based on the thinking-for-speaking model on students reading achievement as well as students' reading motivation. the study used t-test and simple effect analysis using the spss, to analyze the quantitative and qualitative data collected through pre-test and post-test as well as a questionnaire. the result indicated that the teachers’ body language and gestures significantly influenced participants’ scores and enhanced their reading achievement as well as reading motivation. these findings might have some implications for teachers, students, educational programmers, teacher trainers and others to choose and use better platforms for online teaching.