Foreign Language Learning Under an Ecological–Enactive Approach
Álvaro Monterroza Ríos, Olga Novikova, Juan Fernando Gomez-Paniagua
Languages February 26, 2026 DOI: 10.3390/languages11030035 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Affordance Embodied cognition Foreign language Situated learning Linguistic competence Competence human resources Language acquisition Linguistics Action physics Experiential learning German Comprehension approach Cognitive science |
| Key points | Proposes that foreign language learning is best understood as an ecological-enactive process involving coordination of sensorimotor loops and organism-environment coupling, rather than mere internal rule acquisition. |
Abstract
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.