Learner Engagement in Computer-Mediated Chinese Learning

Theoretical Underpinning

In the last two decades, learning theory has evolved and produced a variety of models, which view learning as a process of social, historical, and cultural activity (Cole, 1996). Sociocultural theories describe the learning process and the knowledge to be learned as distributed among participants and situated within the context of activity (Cole & Engestrom, 1993; Lave & Wenger, 1991). In other words, learning can be perceived as a social practice and knowledge can be taken as socially constructed. Social construction cannot be separated from meaningful interactions. As Cole and Engestrom (1993) describes, learning is the consequence of interaction with other people, objects or tools and culture in socially organized and goal-oriented activities. As forms of tools, technology and computer mediation change communication, our actions and our minds (Hampel & Stickler, 2012) and technology enables the sharing of resources between students (Mason & Rennie, 2008) and allows the interactions between teachers and students, and between students themselves during the process in which learning can happen. From this perspective, learning of a foreign language, e.g. Chinese, can happen in the process of learners using the language among themselves for certain communicative purposes via the use of computer-mediated environment.