近代語言學習的觀點認為語言是人類用來與環境中的人事物建立關係的社會認知工具，學習語言是在學習使用這種工具建構人與世界的關係，並從其中獲得生活與生命的意義。這種生態意義建構的觀點與近年來在二語教學界逐漸蔚為風潮的「內容導向教學」及「內容語言整合學習」的教學實踐不謀而合，更可以做為後者的理論基礎與指導準則。本文闡述van Lier（2004）提出的語言學習的十大生態特點，並據此提出「語言即生活、社會即教室」的主張，做為「內容導向教學」及「內容語言整合學習」實踐過程中，教師自我檢核的參考。本文也指出，生態觀的語言學習理論為語言的學習提供所需的動力機轉，有別於偏重機械面的傳統語言學習觀點。根據這樣的觀點，本文建議語言教育學者及語言教師未來可更著力於研究如何從社會心理層面解決學生「為何學」的困惑，而非僅止於探討「如何學」的問題。

The field of language learning has witnessed a shift in the view about how language is to be learned or taught. In this view, language is a cognitive and social tool human users utilize for establishing proper relationships with the environment. Learning a language is learning to use the tool to build up such a relation and acquire the meaning of living and life. This ecological perspective on language and language learning is not only consonant with the pedagogical spirits of Content-Based Instruction (North America) and Content and Language Integrated Learning (Europe and Australia), which have gained increasing popularity in recent years, but can usefully serve as the theoretical basis of the latter. In this article, we explicate the ten ecological features of language learning proposed by van Lier (2004). We summarize them into a simple principle, namely 'Language is living, society is classroom,' and suggest that it can be used as a criterion-check for ensuring the pedagogical spirits claimed to be in the CBI or CLIL practices. We also point out that the ecological perspective on language and language learning explains the power needed for driving a language learning machine. It is distinct from the traditional cognitive perspective, which emphasizes the mechanics of the machine. The ecological perspective calls for more attention given to helping students to explore and acquire the meaning of language and language learning, i.e., to turn on their language learning machine.