Description
Virtual reality (VR) technology, which surged during the pandemic, has been instrumental in facilitating language acquisition by providing an engaging, virtual learning environment. This tool continues to benefit teachers and students in post-pandemic time. The teacher and researcher designed a few VR settings in the XJTLU VR Lab based on textbook material (Road to Success 2). In this presentation, the researcher intends to share the design and utilization of two most favoured VR settings voted by student participants in her class, and the corresponding feedback from questionnaire. One setting is restaurant, where real-life menu photo was shown to participants. International participants were encouraged to interact with their Chinese language partners and exchange knowledge about food culture. The cultural aspect of the restaurant setting empowered international students to express themselves. The other popular setting is library, where learners saw virtual book shelfs, fetched or placed the books as they liked. As they moved the virtual books around, international student participants practiced a new-learned difficult sentence structure “complement of direction” (V+ 来/去). With frequent practice of the structure and instant feedback from Chinese students, international student participants gained more confidence in using this structure, according to their feedback. The VR rooms, especially ones experienced with VR goggles, offer immersive space that is similar to real-life context, but is safer and risk-free for learners to explore new language.| Period | 31 May 2024 → 1 Jun 2024 |
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| Held at | School of Languages |