2-3: LANGUAGE regulates learners’ ACTIVITIES
Language constitutes the primary medium through which learners organise, monitor, and enact their educational activity. It structures engagement with tasks, mediates interaction with peers and teachers, and provides the cognitive and communicative tools necessary for reflection and self-regulation. Every dimension of learning-planning, comprehension, collaboration, and evaluation relies on language to establish coherence, direction, and intentionality. Through language, learners articulate goals, negotiate meaning, and construct pathways towards understanding and performance.
Within the Educational Role of Language (ERL) Framework, language is conceived as the principal regulatory mechanism of educational activity. It bridges cognition and action, transforming knowledge into practice and awareness into agency. Language functions not merely as a medium of expression but as an instrument of control and coordination, shaping how learners process information, manage strategies, and participate in the social dynamics of the classroom.
This interpretation informs the two-tier ERL structure and its eight analytical strands, particularly the strand “Language regulates learners’ Activity.” In this view, learning is not a spontaneous or independent process but a linguistically mediated one, in which language guides and regulates the learner’s cognitive, affective, and social engagement. Recognising and examining this regulatory role of language is therefore essential to understanding the dynamics of learning and the conditions that sustain educational growth.
From a glottodidactic and mediational perspective, language serves both as a means of communication and as a tool of regulation. It enables learners to plan, monitor, and evaluate their actions, while also mediating interaction and co-construction of meaning. In learner-centred and collaborative environments, language supports regulatory dialogues through which students negotiate meaning, share perspectives, and manage their learning processes. This dual role—mediating and regulating—positions language at the very core of educational activity, aligning with the ERL assumption that “learning is an activity governed by language.”