Shaping Human Activity by the Power of Imagination. Philosophical Reflections on Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages

The article examines the role of imagination in learning and teaching English as a foreign language from a philosophical perspective. It attempts to reveal as many sides of this role as possible by offering to take an in-depth look at it from a number of different perspectives. Firstly, the activity of teaching and learning a foreign language is viewed as a type/species of creative activity, which, in turn, is considered a type/species of activity as such. Such a nested view of activity in the given context shows various kinds of imagination-linked contributions at each underlying conceptual level within the fields of teaching and learning English. Next, personal teaching experience is presented as a concise but illustrative case study of the role of imagination: it is also used to highlight a philosophical and linguistic relevance of modality as a related concept. The collection of the results obtained via a philosophical reflection is subsequently compared with relevant excerpts from a genuine and authoritative Cambridge English course by an established author, Michael Swan. Finally, conclusions are drawn both in respect of the general philosophical input of the findings as well as their potential educational value in terms of improving the quality of teaching.