INTRODUCTION
Immerse is a one-of-a-kind platform that offers live language immersion with highly trained teachers in authentic virtual settings so learners can quickly gain the skills they need to use English, Spanish, or French for real communication.
As explained in our white paper Why Immerse Works, Immerse offers a completely different language training approach from other apps. Developed according to the research on language learning, Immerse focuses on spoken fluency and authentic communication skills right from the start, building learners’ ability to participate confidently in conversations in the workplace even when those conversations go in unpredicted directions.
This article will explain how Immerse’s award-winning platform and teaching methodology work to turn language learners into language speakers faster and more effectively than other language apps or classes, making it the most efficient language training platform available.
IMMERSE’S FOUR PILLARS OF LANGUAGE LEARNING
At Immerse, language training falls into four categories: Learn, Connect, Practice, and Play. Each component plays a unique role in the overall learning plan for our learners, and together they provide a comprehensive means of achieving language fluency.
Learn
Learn refers to Immerse’s live, instructor-led 40-minute classes. Each class is led by one of our qualified and experienced language educators and held in one of our 40+ highly interactive virtual environments. Each class helps learners master or accomplish a single communicative task within one of our nine broad language functions. (For an overview of our curriculum, see Appendix A.) Activities during the class are gradually scaffolded to guide learners from an initial introduction to the skill to independent production. The last 10 minutes of each lesson allows learners to continue engaging in a productive task without the instructor present.
For instance, an intermediate-level class on giving advice might take place in a Doctor’s Office scene. The instructor would begin by reviewing the vocabulary for ailments such as headache, fever, and sore throat, as well as ways of requesting and giving advice like, “What should I do?” and “You should see a doctor.” The first activities are simple, like doing a card-matching activity together where ailment sentences (“I think I have a fever”) are matched with advice sentences (“You need to take your temperature”). Pairs then get prompt cards with just a few phrases (“cut my finger / put pressure on it”) and practice having their own dialogue. Finally, they do a role play with a simple prompt like “backache” and act out a conversation between a doctor and a patient, having an extemporaneous conversation based on the earlier activities. The teacher is present to offer encouragement, answer questions, and help out with any new vocabulary that emerges during the role plays.
Connect
Connect sessions are informal but structured synchronous drop-in sessions led by our qualified and experienced instructors. They are designed to help learners connect what they learn in lessons to new authentic contexts through prepared activities and conversation topics linked to one of the nine broad language functions. They run for 2-3 hours at a time and are designed for students to drop in at any time for however long they are free. This allows learners to fit the sessions into their schedule and to participate for the exact amount of time that they require. The Connect sessions are multi-level, providing learners of different fluency levels to practice together and learn from one another as well as from the instructor.
Immerse’s instructors are skilled at guiding the interactions so that each learner gets the type of practice he or she needs at his or her level. A Connect session on the topic of teamwork, for example, might take place in the Meeting Room scene. The teacher might give absolute beginners an activity to help them learn the names of objects in the conference room, break room, and office, while more proficient students could act out a workplace script and have a guided conversation about their work habits and preferences. Advanced students might have a discussion about what they do at work or role play training a new employee.
Practice
At Immerse, we've harnessed AI not to replace, but to augment human interaction. Outside of class times, learners can practice with AI avatars that provide them with personalized conversations and instant feedback, ensuring continuous learning and improvement. Learners have 24/7 access to AI practice scenes that they can join on their own or with other learners. In each scene are a number of avatars, powered by ChatGPT 4, designed to provide unlimited but targeted conversation practice. This means the student can control the content, the difficulty level, and the pace of the learning. This provides extra support for concepts a student may be struggling with and extra speaking practice for students who are still building fluency and confidence, and it encourages independent, self-directed learning. Learners can visit the Practice scenes privately or together.
When a learner walks up to an AI avatar in a practice scene, they are presented with a choice of practice scenarios at various levels. Once they choose a scenario, they are presented with context including what their relationship is with the person, the communicative goal the learner is trying to achieve, and the location where the conversation is taking place. During the conversation, a task menu tracks which tasks have been accomplished, providing immediate feedback for the learner. This practice serves as a way to build learner confidence while providing unlimited conversation practice to develop fluency. In addition, scaffolding is built into these experiences to support learners. Learners can click on a word or sentence to get a definition and see it used in different contexts, and they can ask for hints if they do not know what to say in a conversation. Learners can get additional support by asking direct questions about vocabulary or grammar, seeing instant translations of anything they say in their own language, or starting a new conversation on any topic they personally want to practice.
Play
At Immerse, fun is always front and center. We know research shows that playfulness boosts language learning. Our Play scene is a public space for learners to meet others on the same language journey as themselves while playing fun language games that reinforce vocabulary development. Having access to our games 24/7 allows learners to practice and experiment with the language they are learning in their Immerse classes and beyond.
Some of the games, such as vocabulary archery, can be played alone or with others. Other games, like pictionary, are intended for group play. Practicing together through games and play not only builds language skills but also helps learners participate in the Immerse language learning community. As a community, Immerse learners share tips and resources, practice together, and stress-free opportunities for social interaction in their new language.
Grow
As part of our program, we have also created a Learning Journey that shows learners the progress they have made toward completing all the required classes within a proficiency level. Gamification has been included to award points for each learning activity a learner participates in. As they acquire more points, their Learning Journey menu fills up. Once learners achieve 80% of the possible points, they are prompted to take a skills-based level assessment to determine whether they are ready to move on to the next level.
Students can share their dashboard with their employer.
IMMERSE’S OUTCOME-ORIENTED CURRICULUM
The Immerse curriculum is outcome-oriented and designed to develop specific communicative abilities. Our lessons, features, and learning tools are all just means to an end: upskilling employees’ language skills.
Our learning units are organized around clearly defined communication outcomes. Every activity an Immerse learner engages in is directly connected to one of nine language functions, which cover communication categories ranging from Opinions and Ideas to Health and Safety.
At every level, the topics of lessons, connect sessions, and AI conversation are related to these nine language functions. By the end of each language experience, a learner is able to say that they can do something new. These “can-do” statements are at the core of each lesson that employees take, each connect session they visit, and every AI practice they engage in.
Each Immerse proficiency level includes lessons addressing all nine language functions, and each lesson focuses on a single “can-do” statement.
At Level 1, for instance, there are a number of lessons related to Engaging in Community, including one about shopping (by the end, the learner can ask about prices) and one about jobs (by the end, the learner can state what they do and ask others about their jobs).
Every lesson includes the vocabulary and grammar needed to achieve the communication outcomes, and instructors carefully scaffold the activities so that by the end of the lesson the learners have the language skills to engage in a freestyle role play together in the virtual setting, strengthening their confidence and ability to communicate independently.
Immerse uses a spiral curriculum so as learners progress through the levels, the degree of depth and complexity at which they can perform these nine language functions gradually increases. The “can-do” statements associated with a particular language function require increasingly complex grammar and vocabulary as a learner progresses through the levels.
For example, Level 1 lessons focused on Getting Things Done have simple “can-do” outcomes, like “give and understand basic instructions” and “make simple requests.” An employee can learn to achieve these outcomes by learning relatively simple vocabulary and grammar. Level 5 lessons on Getting Things Done, on the other hand, have more complex “can-do” outcomes, such as "negotiate a solution,” which require learning more advanced grammar and sophisticated vocabulary.
Thus, as learners progress through the levels, they add new outcomes or things they “can do” within each language function, becoming able to express themselves with increasing nuance and complexity.
Individual learners have unique needs, skill sets, native languages, backgrounds, and other variables that influence their language learning pace. Some will progress from level to level more slowly and others a little bit faster. After they complete 80% of the available learning experiences at their level, we let them take a test to assess what they currently “can do” with the language. If they pass, we give them the choice to move up to the next level if they feel ready.
This personalizes the learning pace, letting them move on at the time that is right for them. If they want to be challenged more, or if there are some lessons that just aren’t relevant or personally interesting to them, they are not trapped in their current level. On the other hand, they can choose to stay and complete more lessons if they feel they need more practice before they’re ready for the next level.
Ultimately, each of Immerse’s four pillars - Learn, Connect, Practice, and Play - is a vehicle for increasing the things that a learner "can do" in the language and thus upskilling their language abilities to a higher level of fluency. As employees progress through the platform, they are able to perform a range of important language functions with increasing skill and confidence.
WHY IMMERSE LEARNERS DEVELOP FLUENCY FASTER
Studies by independent academic researchers show that learners develop fluency faster in Immerse. The reason is the way we approach language instruction.
There’s a systemic problem with the way that classes, tutoring, and language apps have students learn. Traditionally, language classes, tutors, and apps focus on reading as the primary skill. While this can feel comfortable to students who associate studying with books and worksheets, learning a language this way actually slows them down.
Vocabulary lists, grammar charts, and reading passages all get learners into two bad habits: translating and processing slowly. They also limit students’ exposure to language as it’s used naturally in real life.
When people are struggling to understand what they hear or read in a new language, they generally ask themselves, “How do I say this in my own language,” and the translation habit is born. Traditional learning methods support the habit of translating by providing students with vocabulary lists with translated definitions, sentences to translate, and reading texts to answer questions about.
Why is translating a bad habit? Because it robs learners of the opportunity to learn to think directly in the new language, which is a necessary skill for fluency. When someone learns a language primarily through writing, they often find it dishearteningly difficult to develop listening and speaking skills even after years of language study.
This is partly because the translation habit slows them down. Translating at the speed of a normal conversation is impossible for anyone except an interpreter. If a learner wants to choose the right words and the right grammar without bringing the conversation to a halt while they think, they need to communicate directly in the language without translating.
The other problem is that learners often have had too little exposure to what the language sounds like when used for authentic communication. Spoken language also tends to be less structured and consistent than written language, and regional accents can vary significantly. A person may learn the spelling and meaning of a word from an app or textbook and still pronounce it incorrectly or fail to recognize it when it’s spoken.
Many language courses and apps provide pre-recorded sentences or lectures, but these are insufficient for teaching authentic communication. There’s a big difference between replaying a recording and asking a real person to repeat what they just said. A tutor can provide live practice, but learners won’t get much exposure to other accents or practice in the context of activities like showing someone around a new office or presenting their tickets and passports while checking in for a flight.
Focusing on live, authentic communication leads to faster fluency growth because students learn to speak and think directly in the language. They also develop much faster language processing and recall speeds than students who learn primarily through written language.
For someone used to viewing language as a school subject like math or science, learning through interaction might seem difficult or scary, especially for beginners. This is why curriculum design is crucial. Immerse focuses on live communication in every activity, but learners get all the support they need to speak and understand. Our highly interactive virtual environments provide context for everything that happens, and Immerse’s friendly, skilled teachers are experts at guiding learners as they interact with one another. Learners get written notes, but always as support for the primary activity - spoken communication.
Through extensive speaking practice, our learners develop faster recall and language processing speed, and they learn to think directly in the language instead of translating. This is why learners become fluent faster in Immerse.
PEDAGOGICAL FRAMEWORKS
The immersive and highly interactive nature of the Immerse platform lends itself optimally to lessons that use an experiential, task-based learning approach that elicits emergent language for our skilled teachers to build on. This integration of technological affordances and experiential, communicative language teaching is a highly effective combination for workforce training, where authentic real-world practice is essential and students must become empowered to use their language skills in any situation that might arise in the course of their work.
Immerse pulls from several different methodologies and frameworks, including experiential learning, communicative language teaching, task-based language teaching, emergent language, and TPACK. Just like when planning for classroom based or online courses, effective VR language course design requires consideration of the learning objectives to be accomplished, the relevant pedagogical approaches, and the affordances of virtual reality. Lastly, we also ensure that all components of our educational offering are designed to support the development of learners’ cognitive, behavioral, and socio-emotional engagement.
Experiential Learning
Experiential learning can be seen as a cyclical learning process where learners have a concrete experience in which they engage directly with an authentic situation. During and after this experience, they notice and think about what happened, tying the experience to previous experiences and conceptual understandings. This reflection on the experience evolves into abstract conceptualization, in which the learners distill their perceptions into new conceptual understandings. This prompts them to test their new ideas by applying them to a new concrete experience, and so the cycle continues.
Immerse understands that language training based on experiential learning is crucial for employees to develop language skills applicable to real world concepts and to develop a sense of themselves as speakers of a new language and members of a new cultural community. Repeated practice using language to accomplish tasks typical of the workplace, such as collaborating on a project, asking for clarification, or politely denying a request, prepares learners to interact in linguistically and culturally appropriate ways on the job as well.
Emergent Language
Emergent language is language that arises spontaneously as learners attempt to communicate their thoughts and ideas in a new language. While teachers can predict and plan for vocabulary and grammar that are likely to come up in a given lesson, there will always be unpredicted language related to the learners’ jobs, viewpoints, and personalities.
At Immerse, we understand it is precisely this language that learners need to learn in order to express themselves and communicate effectively at work. Our teachers are trained to incorporate this spontaneous language into lessons as it arises, and all lessons make space for this kind of learning.
Communicative Language Teaching
Communicative language teaching emphasizes the importance of interactions in acquiring a new language, and throughout every lesson Immerse incorporates highly interactive communicative activities such as role plays, interviews, and opinion sharing. We also include many task-based activities like information gaps and group work.
Having learners collaborate on tasks that work towards a non-linguistic outcome, like constructing a shelter or setting up for a happy hour together, ensures that they focus on pragmatic meaning and learn to draw on the words and language they already know to communicate effectively. This both fosters confidence and also provides a context for figuring out what words or skills they still need to learn.
Cognitive, Behavioral, and Socio-Emotional Engagement
Immerse’s core educational offerings have been carefully designed around three types of engagement: cognitive, behavioral, and socio-emotional. When these three types of engagement are unlocked, learners have the optimal conditions for language acquisition.
Behavioral Engagement refers to how active learners are in the learning process. For example, a learner who consistently attends lessons each week and completes AI-practice activities would be considered to have a high level of behavioral engagement. We know that behavioral engagement leads to better cognitive and socio-emotional engagement, so we encourage and foster key learner behaviors in a number of ways. For example, learners each have a dashboard that allows them to track how many classes and conversation hours they attend. Immerse also nudges ideal behaviors by incentivizing learners to complete certain actions (e.g., attend 3 classes) in order to earn stamps and rewards.
Cognitive Engagement refers to how learners are interacting with the content of lessons as well as building their own autonomy for learning. Immerse’s lessons have been designed to encourage optimal cognitive engagement through the use of micro learning practices that focus on smaller chunks of language and allow learners to practice these chunks before moving on to new concepts. In addition, content in lessons is scaffolded, progressing from easier to more challenging activities. Furthermore, learning in Immerse is not confined to lessons. Learners can also engage with content outside of class by practicing speaking with AI-avatars or playing vocabulary-building games.
Finally, Socio-Emotional Engagement encompasses the affective factors of engagement, such as enjoyment, support, belonging and attitudes towards teachers, coworkers, and learning. Socio-emotional engagement is about building learners’ comfort with taking risks, building their enjoyment of the learning process, and facilitating social connections. At Immerse, we support socio-emotional engagement through the use of avatars which lowers learners’ affective filters, by building a community of learners that support each other during the learning process, and through the use of gamification and badges.
TPACK Framework
TPACK is a framework that helps course designers and lesson creators transfer their knowledge of pedagogical practice and content into technology-enhanced learning experiences.
Guided by the TPACK principles, our Education team draws from the variety of tools and resources available in the Immerse platform, their extensive knowledge of second language acquisition pedagogy, and relevant pedagogical approaches to create powerful and engaging learning experiences for our language students.
The TPACK approach creates unique advantages for the workforce. Imagine you are a sales representative for medical devices and you need to negotiate a deal with potential clients. You register for a class on negotiating in a doctor’s office. Once you join the lesson, you are placed in that environment, guided through micro lessons on key vocabulary and phrases that allow you to pitch to a fellow learner, who is playing the role of your potential client. By the end of the lesson, you have not only been able to practice that language, but because of the affordances within the environment you have acquired the language; making it part of your everyday life. Now, you have gained the confidence needed alongside the language skills to successfully make that pitch.
BUILT-IN TOOLS THAT FACILITATE LEARNING
The Immerse platform has been designed specifically to support language learning. Each feature has been rigorously researched and tested to ensure that it helps students reach their learning goals.
Student Tools
Student Tutorials – Both the Immerse VR and desktop platforms have several built in asynchronous tutorials that help new users familiarize themselves with moving around, interacting with objects, and utilizing the student tools. Tutorials can be completed by learners as many times as they want.
Backpack Tools – Each learner has a backpack which can be used to store grabbable objects and a camera that can take pictures which are then stored on the learner’s device. In addition, learners have access to a 3D pen, notepad that can be typed on or written on, and a vocabulary scanner that they can use to learn the words for objects in each environment.
Class Notes – Learners have access to class notes that are generated by instructors. These notes can be accessed during and after class. In addition, they have a help request button that can be used at any point in the lesson to quietly call an instructor’s attention.
Teacher Tools
Immerse’s instructors also have several tools that they can implement throughout lessons to better guide students through the learning experience.
These include:
- Instructor Script: This allows an instructor to have a script to read in order to prep the learners for an activity. This script is only visible to the instructor during a lesson.
- Instructions: This is the instructional content that can be sent to a learner during a class so that they understand how to partake in the current activity. We are currently building an AI tool that will allow learners to translate part or all of the instructions into their L1.
- Notes: This is the learning content (i.e., new words, phrases) that can be sent to the learners so they can reference it during class and/or save for review later. We are currently building an AI tool that will allow learners to translate part or all of the notes into their L1.
- Lecture: Content can be activated by an instructor and show up on a lecture screen in a scene during a lesson. Text, slides, or videos (via a Youtube link) can be used.
- Graphic Organizer. The Graphic Organizer is a large screen with movable tiles. The Graphic Organizer can be populated with up to 4 headings and 12 tiles. Learners can then move the tiles into whatever order they want on the screen and they can also stick objects onto the screen. This is great for warm up activities and introducing students to new vocabulary at the beginning of lessons.
- Prompts. Prompts can be populated with text or images. The text and images can be revealed in one of two ways - through individual cards that learners can grab and hold or through a pop-up text that learners in a group can read together. Prompts are great for scaffolding activities by supporting students with key language and structures.
- Nested Prompt. Nested Prompts provide up to 8 inputs and outputs so that when a learner pushes on an input, a specific output is generated. Similar to prompts, these are used to provide students with key language and structures.
- Polls. A Poll question with or without an image can be added to a poll interface. Up to 6 possible answers can be provided. The instructor can see the percentage of responses for each answer and use the poll to judge how well students mastered the learning objective of a given lesson.
IMMERSE: LANGUAGE TRAINING THAT WORKS
In a world where “knowing a language” means far more than the ability to complete grammar and vocabulary exercises, Immerse offers real language training that works. Our program is designed specifically to turn language learners into self-assured, fluent speakers with the skills and confidence they need to communicate effectively in any situation. For more information about how Immerse can work with your organization to achieve real language training results, try Immerse classes and AI-powered avatar role plays for free with a 14-day trial.
APPENDIX
.jpg)
.png)
