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The development of Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) pedagogy and English Language Teaching (ELT) has been built on a Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) ideology that, on the one hand, has not provided sufficient knowledge on the socio-cultural aspects of language learning and its socialisation processes, and, on the other, has limited the ways in which individuals can build on their most personal, emotional and creative needs. Within this state of affairs, mainstream psychological and cognitive approaches to Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and CLT methodologies have prevented a vision of the language learner that invokes humanistic ideals and the development of the self. This book argues for a change in the direction of language teaching towards a language pedagogy that focuses on the personal aspects of the language learning experience and the possibilities it affords for the transformation of the self. This view of language learning claims that languages and cultures are not abstract and timeless phenomena; rather, it claims that languages come in different versions and sizes to fit the bodies of their owners and their circumstances. According to this view, languages are not only "acquired" and "learnt", but also "lived".

DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-52853-7_1

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