Foreign Language Learning Under an Ecological–Enactive Approach

Bibliographic Data

ID19487444
AuthorsAlvaro David Monterroza-Rios (0000-0002-4326-5178, Instituto Tecnológico Metropolitano, corresponding author), Olga Anatolyevna Novikova (0000-0001-6721-0430, Antioquia Institute of Technology), Juan Fernando Gómez Paniagua (0000-0003-1004-6793, Language Area, Departamento de Ciencias Básicas y Áreas Comunes, Tecnológico de Antioquia—Institución Universitaria, Medellín 050036, Colombia), Juan Fernando Gomez-Paniagua (Antioquia Institute of Technology)
Year2026
Volume11
Issue3
Pages35
Publication date2026-02-26
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguages (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2226-471X • E-ISSN: 2226-471X
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/languages11030035
OpenAlexW7131653459
LanguageEN
References cited54

This article argues that learning a foreign language cannot be understood solely as the acquisition of internal grammatical or lexical rules, but rather as a form of action situated and corporeally embodied in a social, material, and cultural environment from which new linguistic skills emerge. Hence, we propose to describe foreign language learning under an ecological–enactive approach to cognition, that is, a coordination of two simultaneous multilevel processes: (i) at the subpersonal level, as the coordination of sensorimotor loops that adjust phonation, prosody, and auditory discrimination, and (ii) at the personal level, as the organism–environment coupling led by sociomaterial affordances that guide linguistic exploration. We conclude that active and immersive methodologies are more effective because they synchronize sensorimotor plasticity with the detection of affordances, enabling linguistic competence to emerge as a progressive self-organization of the agent–world system

Affordance · Competence (human resources) · Embodied cognition · Foreign language · Language acquisition · Linguistic competence · Situated · Situated learning · Action Observation and Synchronization · Embodied and Extended Cognition · Language and cultural evolution

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