Page 63 - Linguistically Diverse Educational Contexts

levels of linguistic competence, language acquisition, and learning using teaching methods and techniques (Gębal, 2020, p. 11). Thus, it may be necessary to shift the emphasis from an approach focusing exclusively on language science88, psycholinguistics89, and teaching methods, to a science of pedagogy (Polish: pedagogika) with an inter- and intra-disciplinary character90, a humanistic-social science.
3.2.3 Conceptual chaos in foreign language didactics in Poland
My analysis shows that Polish linguists as well as researchers and teachers of Polish as a second language are influenced by Polish and European linguists, who, like Z. Klemensiewicz, stressed the theoretical aim of language teaching, omitting the practical aspect, as they believed that grammar is the art of correct speaking. The first publication on detailed methodology (Polish: metodyki szczegółowej) in Poland was written by Z. Klemensiewicz (1939). Its main assumptions were the analysis and observation of linguistic facts and the use of inductive thinking in reaching conclusions and generalisations concerning the functioning of language. The findings made by Z. Klemensiewicz are still relevant in Polish schools (Szymańska, 2016, p. 38). In turn, teachers of foreign languages, for example English, are influenced by authors dealing with language and language education from Anglo- Saxon circles, meaning that they drew on both the American tradition, namely theories on language acquisition and learning (described above), and foreign language teaching derived from English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL). On the other hand, the issue of plurilingual education in Poland is addressed, although also in a limited way, by philologists, mainly English language speakers, in the context of reflection on the methodological and media instruments of foreign language education (Kotarba-Kańczugowska, 2015, p. 15)91.
Polish researchers are not unanimous in their views of foreign language didactics. They seem to take different positions in light of the language research they do and the literature they read. For example, Aleksander Szulc, a Polish linguist, Germanist, and Scandinavianist, states in his Dictionary of the didactics of foreign languages (1997, p. 53) that foreign language didactics/glottodidactics is a pedagogical discipline which, with reference to general didactics, deals with the process of mastering a foreign language in a controlled way and that it is, among other things, a result of such sciences as: theoretical and applied linguistics, psycholinguistics, psychology, sociolinguistics, sociology, speech physiology, acoustics, and speech therapy. However, the description of general didactics lacks any reference to language education (see Klus-Stańska, 2019, pp. 247–265; also Klus-Stańska, 2018). The question that also arises is why, given such a positioning of language didactics, does pedagogy as a science have so little influence on it? After all, actually only the themes of teaching, language acquisition, and learning with the use of teaching methods and techniques are still taken up. On the other hand, H. Komorowska, a linguist and English language teacher, states in her 2017 publication
88 "Despite its multifaceted nature, linguistics is not an eclectic science, and for methodological reasons a strong emphasis should be placed on the fact that any linguistic study should arise within the limits of linguistic facts"(Doroszewski, 1962, p. 15).
89 Psycholinguistics incorporates the achievements of linguistics in the study of first language acquisition. See Arabski,1985, p.6.
90 "So that it is possible to use the existing and still developing knowledge capital from pedagogically relevant areas, fields and disciplines of science for better cognition, understanding and use of pedagogical phenomena in practice" (Śliwerski, 2019, p. 36).
91 I wrote about this in Chapter 1.
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