Virtual Reality-Integrated Immersion-Based Teaching to English Language Learning Outcome

Front Psychol. 2022 Feb 8:12:767363. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.767363. eCollection 2021.

Abstract

Globalization and informatization are reshaping human life and social behaviors. The purpose is to explore the worldwide strategies to cultivate international talents with a global vision. As a global language with the largest population, English, and especially its learning effect, have always been the major concerns of scholars and educators. This work innovatively studies the combination of immersion-based English teaching with virtual reality (VR) technology. Then, based on the experimental design mode, 106 students from a Chinese school were selected for a quasi-experimental study for 16 weeks (3 h a week, and 48 h in total). The collected data were analyzed by computer statistical software, and hypotheses are verified. The results showed that there is a significantly positive correlation between VR and immersion-based language teaching (0.851, p < 0.01). There is a significantly positive correlation between immersion-based language teaching and academic achievement (0.824, p < 0.01), and VR is positively correlated with learning outcome (LO) (0.836, p < 0.01). Compared with other state-of-art research methods, this work modifies the students' oral test through the analysis and comparison with the system database, and the students' learning effect is greatly improved. Finally, some suggestions are put forward according to the research results to provide an experimental reference for English teachers and future linguistics teaching.

Keywords: English language; immersive language teaching; language ability; learning outcome; virtual reality.