Are the Only Things That Count the Things That Can Be Counted? On Modeling as a Cognitive Tool in the Field of Foreign Language Learning and Teaching

Abstract

This article focuses on the nature and function of modeling as a form of reasoning in scientific research with special reference to its significance to the field of foreign language learning and teaching (FLLT) regarded as a relatively autonomous empirical discipline [Dakowska (Models of Language Learning and Language Use in the Theory of Foreign Language Didactics. Peter Lang, 1996); Dakowska (O rozwoju dydaktyki jezykow obcych jako dyscypliny naukowej. [On the development of foreign language didactics as a scientific discipline]. Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2014)]. It is my thesis that, more than elsewhere, modeling is both inevitable and indispensable as a rational step in investigating language in the twenty-first century in view of the abundance of approaches and schools of thought. This situation necessitates a comprehensive, criteria-oriented identification of research foci which constitute the numerous language sciences we have nowadays. It is especially significant in a discipline like foreign language learning and teaching, or foreign language didactics, which has pure as well as applied goals. Applied goals cannot be accomplished unless the discipline in question represents its subject matter of investigation as a model of a certain kind, i.e. a model incorporating empirical constraints which make it applicable, i.e. convertible into guidelines for foreign language teaching.