(This report is provided by Dr. Chen’s research team in the Department of English)

Many language learning experts believe that in an immersive virtual reality (VR), language learners not only receive visual and auditory language input simultaneously, but also learn in a highly interactive manner, which enhances learning effectiveness. 

In order to investigate how the high interactivity of VR helps language learning, we used a control experiment to compare the effectiveness of English vocabulary learning of a VR game player group and a VR game video watcher group, and interviewed students from both groups about their learning experience.

The results showed that the player group learned and recalled more English vocabulary and was more motivated to learn than the viewer group. This indicated that the highly interactive learning environment created by VR has a positive impact on learners' motivation and vocabulary learning. This study provides more insight into the effectiveness of VR-assisted language learning.

Figure 1. An example of interacting with a virtual character.

Many vocabulary learning experts believe that by immersing learners in a virtual reality (VR) environment, learners can acquire new vocabulary by having various types of sensory experiences (e.g., visual, auditory, etc.), observing things in three-dimensional space in real time as if they were there, and interacting with the objects in the space. In response to this discourse, many scholars have explored the effectiveness of VR in terms of foreign language vocabulary learning, but the reported learning outcomes have been mixed (for positive outcomes see Chen, 2016; Lan, Fang, Legault, & Li, 2015; Madini & Alshaikhi, 2017; for non-significant outcomes see Cheng, Yang, & Anderson, 2017).

In addition, most experiments have been conducted on desktop computers, but few have examined the recent emergence of head-mounted displays (HMDs). To this end, this study used head-mounted VR devices as the main subject to investigate whether the highly interactive environment presented by these devices could contribute to English learners' vocabulary learning.

We selected the Mondly VR app developed by EdTech as the language learning software for the experiment and installed it on a Samsung Gear VR head-mounted device. To test whether the high interactivity of the VR environment is useful for vocabulary learning, we invited two groups of seventh-graders to participate in the experiment. One group (the VR player group) wore the VR device to directly operate the software, while the other group (the video watcher group) used a desktop computer to watch a pre-recorded video of the same software. The biggest difference between the two groups was the level of interaction involved in learning. The player group could interact with the characters built into the software. The viewer group, however, could not directly interact with the characters but only pause or replay the video at will. Both groups were given a vocabulary test before and after the game to see if they had gained new vocabulary after the experiment. In the second week after the game, both groups also took the same vocabulary test again to test the level of forgetfulness of the newly learned vocabulary.

The results of the study showed that both the immediate and the delayed post-test scores of the VR player group were significantly higher than the pre-test, and there was no significant difference between the two post-test scores, indicating that the VR player group not only learned new vocabulary after the experiment, but also did not forget too many newly learned words after two weeks. On the other hand, although the immediate post-test scores of the video watcher group were higher than their pre-test scores, the delayed post-test scores were not significantly different from their pre-test scores, showing that the video watcher group had forgotten a large extent of the newly learned vocabulary. In addition, both the immediate post-test and the delayed post-test scores of the VR player group were significantly higher than those of the video watcher group, displaying that the VR player group performed better than the video watcher group in terms of vocabulary learning and retention. Based on the results of this study, it can be inferred that the high interactivity of the VR environment not only has a positive effect on vocabulary learning, but also helps learners to store newly learned vocabulary in their long-term memory. In other words, the immersive learning mode is very helpful for foreign language vocabulary learning.

Reference:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09588221.2020.1752735 

Other References:
Chen, Y. L. (2016). The effects of VR learning environment on student cognitive andlinguistic development.The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, 25(4), 637–646. doi:10.1007/s40299-016-0293-2

Lan, Y. J., Fang, S. Y., Legault, J., & Li, P. (2015). Second language acquisition ofMandarin Chinese vocabulary: Context of learning effects. Educational Technology Research and Development,63(5), 671–690. doi:10.1007/s11423-015-9380-y

Madini, A. A., & Alshaikhi, D. (2017). VR for teaching ESP vocabulary: A myth or apossibility. International Journal of English Language Education, 5(2), 111–126. doi:10.5296/ijele.v5i2.11993

Cheng, A., Yang, L., & Andersen, E. (2017). Teaching language and culture with a VRgame. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 541–549). Denver, CO. Retrieved from https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3025857