Yu-Ju Lan - Contextual Language Learning: Real Language Learning on the Continuum from Virtuality to Reality

This book series investigates several critical issues embedded in fundamental, technical, and applied research in the field of Chinese as second language (CSL) learning and teaching, including learning mechanism in the brain, technology application for teaching, learning and assessment. The book series discusses these issues from the perspectives of science (evidence-based approach) and technology. The studies in the book series use the methods from the fields of linguistics (such as corpus linguistics and computational linguistics), psychological and behavioural sciences (such as experimental design and statistical analyses), informational technology (such as information retrieval and natural language processing) and brain sciences (such as neuroimaging and neurolinguistics). The book series generally covers three main interdisciplinary themes: (1) fundamental investigation of Chinese as a first or second language acquisition, (2) development in Chinese language learning technology, and (3) applied research on Chinese language education.

Please contact Melody Zhang (e-mail: melodymiao.zhang@springer.com) for submitting book proposals for this series.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13176

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

The year 2020 presentesd the world with incredible challenges brought about by the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. These challenges have impacted on all aspects of our lives regardless of where we live. Our societies have been forced to look at new ways of doing some things for the first time. At the same time, the pandemic has brought into even sharper focus issues that have existed for a long time, many of which have been subject to ongoing research, reflection, experimentation, and change, albeit it often at a relatively slow pace. The pandemic has provided a new momentum to help overcome the inertia that has held back innovation in many fields as we cling to familiar ways of conducting our business, whatever that may be.

Education is no exception. Lockdowns implemented by governments around the world to slow down the spread of the COVID virus have seen educational institutions everywhere scramble to provide students with high-quality learning experiences in a fully online environment. As many have found, simply moving the classroom-based curriculum online rarely works well, and potentially leaves students feeling disengaged, demotivated, and isolated. Many educators and educational institutions have responded to this challenge with innovative approaches that have helped, at least in part, to address these and the many other issues in education highlighted by the pandemic.

Some of these issues are in fact not new and have been the subject of much thought, research, and experimentation over a period of decades. Technology has also played a role in this thinking about new approaches to education, the Internet being one of the more obvious examples of how technology can bring radical new opportunities to teaching and learning. This book is timely in that the research described in its chapters, while carried out mostly before the onset of the pandemic, has a poignant relevance in terms of addressing some of the new challenges spawned by the pandemic while at the same time being driven by the desire to address issues that existed pre-pandemic. Even as we move into a new era of education that may well be a hybrid model of online and face-to-face learning, technologies like virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) provide educators with a means of exploring new and innovative ways of value-adding to educational experiences and outcomes. The following chapters describe in detail a range of research carried out using VR and AR technology and the pedagogical approaches facilitated by these technologies.