The essentials of effective gesture
It is generally admitted that good gestures help to vitalize, illuminate, and emphasize verbal expression.
If students of the art of speech-making can be led to understand the underlying principles of gesture and the reasons for its expressiveness, a notable improvement in their style of delivery can be effected.
In our instruction and our textbooks dealing with this subject, there has been a tendency to inform the student, ex-cathedra, that he should use such and such a gesture on this and that passage. In thus performing the function of trainers only, we get more or less mechanical results on the passages in question, but we do not give the insight that enables the student to apply the gestures to similar or analogous ideas wherever expressed.
To tell him, for example, that "thousands of acres" may be indicated by a broad sweep of the hand is surely less beneficial than to lead him to understand that the passage of the hand through space conveys to the audience the idea of extent. Speaking generally, it is not so much by teaching specific gestures as by pointing out the significance of various positions and lines of movement,
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