Researchers have found that VR can reduce foreign language anxiety (Gruber & Kaplan-Rakowski, 2021; Thrasher, 2022; York et al., 2021). However, research has yet to empirically measure both learners' real-time self-reported and physiological anxiety during VR activities and to establish whether this lower anxiety leads to better language performance.
This presentation addresses these research gaps by presenting a study that examined how the physiological and self-reported anxiety of two focus groups of three students each (N = 6) fluctuated and impacted students' performance during group interpersonal speaking tasks in three learning environments. At the onset, participants' background and baseline self-reported anxiety were first established. Then, participants completed six comparable 20-minute group interpersonal consensus building tasks in French over a 12-week period in three different environments: two in a classroom, two in Zoom and two in the VR application, vTime XR. All tasks were video-recorded and participants' heart rate (HR) was continuously tracked second-by-second during each task. Immediately after each task, participants self-reported their anxiety via a questionnaire.
Each groups' video-recorded discussions were transcribed verbatim and coded into seven incremental levels of interpersonal discourse, ranging from simple to more complex, using Hull & Saxon's (2009) Interaction Analysis Model. Then, participants' HR data was merged with the transcriptions and video-recordings to determine how heart rate fluctuated in response to participants' conversations. Specifically, each participant's HR data was overlayed onto the video recordings to be able to visualize increases and decreases in HR. Moments of peaks and lulls in HR were triangulated with the transcriptions and qualitatively analyzed within the context of the conversation to pinpoint specific moments where anxiety ebbed and flowed in the different environments.
This presentation will report the findings that emerged from this analysis in an effort to understand how various factors within each learning environment impacted anxiety and, subsequently, oral performance in French. Specific emphasis will be placed on how anxiety fluctuated in VR, since it was found that participants, particularly those with high anxiety in general, were less physiologically susceptible to potential stressors in VR and, subsequently, produced more understandable, fluent, and complex French speech.
Gruber, A., & Kaplan-Rakowski, R. (2021). The impact of high-immersion virtual reality on
foreign language anxiety when speaking in public. SSRN. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3882215
Hull, D. M., & Saxon, T. F. (2009). Negotiation of meaning and co-construction of
knowledge: An experimental analysis of asynchronous online instruction. Computers and Education, 52(3), 624-639. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2008.11.005
Thrasher, T. (2022). The impact of virtual reality on L2 French learners' language anxiety
and oral comprehensibility: An exploratory study. CALICO Journal, 39(2), 219-238. https://doi.org/10.1558/cj.42198
York, J., Shibata, K., Tokutake, H., & Nakayama, H. (2021). Effect of SCMC on foreign
language anxiety and learning experience: A comparison of voice, video, and VR-based oral interaction. ReCALL, 33(1), 49-70. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0958344020000154
