Introduction: Contextualizing Mobile Language Learning in Japan

Abstract

This chapter first introduces the organization of the whole book and its genesis in the collaboration of the authors at an international applied linguistics conference. The first section also touches upon the variety of universities represented, and how the case study chapters follow a similar structure. Next, mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) is defined within e-learning and technology-assisted language learning (TELL) fields by contextualizing MALL into cultural, disciplinary, and historical dimensions. Then the development of MALL in Japan is traced from the mobile Internet, about which little has been published, to the early mobile phone stage and recent smartphone and tablet era, through a literature review. Data on Japanese infant use of handheld devices lastly provide a glimpse of the future.