Virtual Reality in the Language Classroom: Strategies to Make it Work

The present investigation aimed to assess the use of scaffolding strategies by young English as a second language learners who carried out communicative tasks in the context of high-immersive virtual reality (HVR) ( Kaplan-Rakowski & Gruber, 2019 ). More specifically, 24 students enrolled in an intensive program in the province of Quebec, Canada, were recorded as they carried out four communicative tasks while wearing head-mounted displays and navigating virtual worlds. Based on the work of Gagné and Parks (2013) and García Mayo and Imaz Agirre (2019) , the analysis consisted in the identification of strategies as they pertained to language and other aspects of the tasks, such as technological challenges. Using language-related episodes (LRE) as a unit of analysis, the investigation revealed that participants produced 247 LREs that were generally triggered and resolved by the student themselves and that focused on the vocabulary found in the tasks and the virtual world. The analysis of the recordings for strategies other than language-related revealed that students used 14 different strategies, five of which were specific to the HVR context. Implications for the use of HVR in the context of language learning are also discussed.