Lan, Y. J., & Lin, Y. T. (2016). Mobile Seamless Technology Enhanced CSL Oral Communication. Educational Technology & Society, 19 (3), 335–350. 335 ISSN 1436-4522 (online) and 1176-3647 (print). This article of the Journal of Educational Technology & Society is available under Creative Commons CC-BY-ND-NC 3.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). For further queries, please contact Journal Editors at ets-editors@ifets.info. Mobile Seamless Technology Enhanced CSL Oral Communication Yu-Ju Lan * and Yen-Ting Lin Department of Applied Chinese Language and Culture, National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan // yujulan@gmail.com // roylin1003@gmail.com * Corresponding author (Submitted June 8, 2015 Revised September 28, 2015 Accepted October 29, 2015) ABSTRACT The current study aimed at investigating how mobile seamless technology can be used to enhance the pragmatic competence of learners of Chinese as a second language (CSL). 34 overseas CSL learners participated in this study. They were randomly assigned into two groups: the classroom group, executing language tasks in fake contexts in a traditional classroom; and the real-world group, executing identical tasks in real world with the support provided by a mobile seamless learning platform (MOSE). All the CSL learners were asked to make a plan of receiving a friend abroad after collecting the information about the shops or stores in the neighborhood of the campus. Both quantitative (Mandarin communication performance test) and qualitative data (videos recorded during the learning process) were collected and analyzed in this 4-week study. The analytical results show that both groups made significant improvements in the test-based Mandarin communication performance. However, according to the qualitative data, the CSL learners in the real-world group made significantly fewer errors when executing language tasks than did those in the classroom group. Furthermore, they did not depend on their first language to communicate with the people they visited in the real world and they had more peer cooperation with the support provided by the MOSE platform compared with those in the classroom group. Keywords Contextual language learning, Immersive learning, Mandarin, Chinese as a second language, Context awareness, mobile seamless learning Introduction Being able to use a foreign/second language (FL/L2) appropriately is an essential component in evaluating the success of FL/L2 education. Pragmatic competence referring to the ability to use language appropriately in different social situations, thus, should be considered in FL/L2 teaching, as described in The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe, 2001) and the proficiency guidelines developed by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (Swender et al., 2012). In order to develop the pragmatic competence in the target language, some approaches have been suggested and adopted in FL/L2 education. Among them, context-based language learning is heavily highlighted by FL/L2 researchers and educators (Serrano, Llanes, & Tragant, 2011). Context-based instruction has a foundation on the sociocultural theory of second language acquisition (SLA) which emphasizes the integrated nature of learner. Moreover, social context elements in the learning process (Eun & Lim, 2009) include the contexts and the interaction mediate language learning, and thus they play an important role in the SLA process (Ellis, 2008). According to the perspective of sociocultural SLA, immersing in an authentic context is important for L2 learning (Lan, 2014) because an L2 cannot be acquired merely via context-reduced practicing by rote. L2 learning which emphasizes the importance of learners using the target language in an authentically immersive environment befits L2 learners’ oral performance and forms accuracy (Lan, Kan, Hsiao, Yang, & Chang, 2013). The evidence obtained from brain-related research also supports context-immersive learning for L2 acquisition (Zinser & Li, 2012). As Mandarin Chinese learning has become popular globally over recent years (Ramzy, 2006), many people have traveled to such countries as China, Taiwan, and Singapore, in which Mandarin Chinese is the dominant or primary language, in order to acquire the language. Taiwan has been one of the most popular countries for learners of Chinese as a second language (CSL), and especially for overseas Chinese students from around the world because the Chinese tradition and culture has been preserved on this Asia Pacific Island (Lan, 2014). How we could meet the learning needs of those overseas Chinese students in appropriately using Mandarin in real-life occasions, consequently, becomes a challenge to Mandarin training institutes (Lan, Lin, & Tsai, 2014). To take up the challenge and to consider the importance of contexts for SLA, context-based real-life language tasks are usually included in the