If I change the world changes: Language teaching from an emergentistic perspective

The objective of this paper is to show that viewing language teaching as a complex system can help the teacher in the classroom. As far as complex systems, among other aspects, are characterized by being open, self-regulating, and sensitive to initial conditions, the teacher can use these characteristics to make the system emerge, investing less work and producing more results. Having that in mind, I try to explain what a complex system is, how it emerges, and how its course can be corrected. I also show the relationship between the different elements that make up a given system and between different systems, with examples from everyday situations and the classroom. The conclusion is that traditional approaches, for being reductionist, are unable to explain language development. Because they ignore the interaction between the different elements in the system, they end up by burdening the teacher with unproductive tasks.