Understanding Language Education: An Interdisciplinary Approach

Posted on Dec 12, 2025 in Primary Education

Language Education as an Academic Discipline

Language education is a scientific discipline related to the social sciences (one of the five major branches of knowledge). It is an interdisciplinary field based on other areas with a longer history, such as applied linguistics, psychology, and pedagogy. It’s one of the so-called “specific didactics” that are usually part of the departments of Education Sciences in universities and the scientific system in our country.

It is important to note that this is a diverse and pluralistic area that has incorporated knowledge, trends, research instruments, and techniques from other related areas. However, as a discipline, language education has its own entity.

General Didactics in the 20th Century

General didactics emerged in the 20th century along with psycho-pedagogy as an extension of the established education sciences. The development of these disciplines in the last century didn’t solve some challenges related to teaching, learning, and the problems students faced in school. These problems required knowledge from other fields, which led to the development of specific didactics. In the past, the difference between general didactics and specific didactics caused some disagreements. Some people believed specific didactics should be independent, while others thought that such differentiation was unnecessary because it led to excessive specialization, limiting the development of knowledge.

The Evolution of Specific Didactics

Specific didactics have been considered specializations that come from general didactics or as teaching methods with a more practical approach than broader fields like linguistics (Titone, 1981). Some supporters of general didactics have argued that specific didactics are not independent scientific fields, but this idea has been abandoned in recent decades.

Nowadays, specific didactics are connected to general didactics. They share a common pedagogical foundation, but each has its own characteristics. The didactics of language and literature is a part of education sciences connected to general didactics. However, it has its own unique features, making it an important and separate area of study. Language education is about studying the connection between the student, the language being learned, and the teacher. The connection between these three elements should be studied together, not separately, because this link is the main part of language education, as supported by many authors in our country:

  • Bellester, 2012
  • López Valero and Encabo, 2002
  • Mendoza, 2003
  • Mendoza and López Valero, 200

The questions of what language is, how it is learned, and how it is taught are the three questions to which the didactics of language and literature must provide answers.

Language Education

Language education is an interdisciplinary scientific field that integrates approaches from various areas, such as linguistics, psychology, and pedagogy. Although some people questioned whether it should be its own field separate from linguistics (Malmberg, 1971; Quilis, 1978) and its distinction from general didactics, currently, it has strong foundations and offers a unique way to study language, focusing on teaching and learning.

Language education is different from linguistics because it is focused on solving practical teaching problems and improving the school system. The ideas of Bronckart (1991), Bronckart and Plazada (1991), and Chevallard (1989) are important here because they adjust linguistic theories to the specific object of study (Mendoza, López Valero, and Martos Nunez, 1996). In other words, they fit the classroom and make them more useful for teachers and students.

Foreign Language Education

Foreign language education (FLE) is about teaching and learning languages that aren’t spoken as second languages or have official status in a region.

English is the most studied language. Terms like TESOL, ESL, and TEFL refer to different ways of teaching.

Daniel Madrid (2000) talks about the challenge of combining theory and practice in teaching. He introduces a model that shows that teaching is a mix of many areas.

The communicative approach focuses on real situations, learning through interaction, and understanding real contexts. This idea influenced the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (2001), which supports methods like bilingual learning and student-focused teaching.

Intercultural and plurilingual competence refer to combining language learning with different cultural experiences.

In short, foreign language education combines learning ideas with practice to help students learn languages and connect with different cultures.