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http://youtu.be/gDU-5M1qg9wAliceAnd then..the organisation which is decentralised but has a very ^outward focus we can think of open systems…At a later stage of the tutorial, the student produced the expression ‘upwardfocused’organisations, which does not exist in English and which was not used bythe lecturer. It may have been that he processed her upward gesture semanticallyand incorporated this into his understanding of the nature of the organisations:http://youtu.be/b0S5v73TBBsKarimAnd there is another, did I mentions? which about the companieswith decentralised and ^ upward focused like export orientatedcompanies, I guessIt is not always easy to know what to do about these sorts of misunderstandingsas we are rarely in total control of our language and gestures and we mayinadvertently be sending messages that we do not intend to send. One solution isto attend closely to the metaphors and gestures that are used by the student andto use the same or closely related metaphors and gestures when responding totheir questions. Another is to attend carefully to one’s own use of metaphors. It isto this area that we now turn.ImplicationsHow can we ensure that our metaphors are understood?As we have seen, international students sometimes misinterpret metaphors inacademic contexts or interpret them literally and misunderstandings can arisewhen different metaphors and gestures are used. One way to reduce the risk ofthis happening is to signal your uses of metaphor. This can be done either throughthe use of gesture or words.Gestural signaling of metaphor useAlice makes particularly effective use of gestures to signal the use of metaphorwhen speaking to international students. Her use of expansive gestures is clearInternational Students | 371