Design of a Distributed Language Learning Environment

In this chapter, informed by a Distributed Language perspective, we leverage the use of virtual reality (VR) technology and classroom space in the context of learning Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). Through the design of this Distributed Language Learning Environment (DLLE), we aim to provide (1) a Distributed Language-informed pedagogical model of language instruction. Distributed Language promotes instructional practices that leverage formal and informal spaces to provide learners with opportunities for languaging experiences, meaning-making events, and sensemaking susceptible to social influences. For in language, we are always doing something—often with others (i.e., first-order languaging experience)—while we are constrained by and able to use skilled linguistic action (Newgarden, Zheng, & Liu, 2015) to do things with (second-order) lexicogrammar (Thibault, 2011). By teaching language like we do math, science, or history, we restrict language to second-order processes (VanPatten, 2017). We harness four main concepts under the umbrella of Distributed Language—embodiment, values-realizing, affordances, and scaffolding, and address the ethical concerns of language education by using an aspect of radical ecolinguistics to explore how by design we can help language learners to care about our common responsibility of caring for our earth.