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Pseudoscience
Pseudoscience (/su:dəʊsaɪəns/) is pseudoscholarship that presents itself as science, while it does not meet the criteria to be properly called such.[1] The term pseudoscience is considered pejorative because it suggests something is being presented as science inaccurately or deceptively. Those described as practising or advocating pseudoscience often dispute the characterisation.
Unfortunately, language learning is not immune from pseudoscience.[2] This mostly affects the field of language acquisition studies, but is practically entwined with “alternative methods” that are based on at best dubious principles, i.e. what might be termed pseudopedagogy. Creators of alternative methods do not often try to convince the teaching community of the validity of their views, rather they tend to seek to convince students to pay for their product.
Ironically, alternative methods may in practice obtain results, not because they work in the incoherent way that they are claimed to, but because of other factors, e.g. by indirectly providing comprehensible input, or by motivating students to study independently.
Otherwise, pseudoscience-related issues do affect CLIL, particularly biology and medicine, and especially in countries where the enlightenment hasn’t had much effect.
