Language Programs Struggle to Provide their Students with Enough Speaking Practice
Learning to speak a new language fluently takes a lot of practice—up to 2,200 hours depending on the language (Foreign Service Institute)! That's a huge challenge in a traditional classroom, where time for individual speaking practice is limited.
To bridge this gap, some language instructors organize virtual exchanges or speaking clubs, but these can be difficult to implement. Coordinating such exchanges is time consuming, and success depends heavily on how well everyone’s schedules mesh. In addition, live conversation practice can be intimidating for shy or anxious students.
That’s where technology steps in. While language apps and online platforms offer some help, they often lack a real-world feel. Virtual reality (VR) offers a more authentic and engaging way to practice in what is perceived by students as a safe-space. Students are also generally much more comfortable speaking in VR, which has been shown to alleviate Foreign Language Anxiety.
How Immerse Partners with Universities
Immerse collaborates with universities to offer language learners additional conversation practice and significantly enhance their speaking skills. By immersing students in a low-risk virtual world, we help them overcome their fears of speaking a new language and develop their skills in context. Here's how we partnered with the University of North Texas to elevate their students' speaking and conversational fluency.
Immerse and UNT
The Intensive English Language Institute at the University of North Texas was looking for a way to provide their English as a Second Language (ESL) students with additional conversation practice. They chose to partner with Immerse to pilot a VR club where students could engage in extra language learning opportunities outside of class time.
Thirty ESL students enrolled at the Intensive English Language Institute during the summer period were invited to join the VR club. The club, which met twice weekly, gave students the chance to practice speaking English using Immerse. Students predominantly engaged with Immerse’s AI-powered role plays.
The students at the institute come from around the world with various academic and professional backgrounds and varying English language abilities. Since AI conversation partners in Immerse offer flexible practice tailored to students' diverse needs, the teachers and staff predicted using Immerse would be highly beneficial for their learners.
Findings
After the VR club concluded, we interviewed the instructors and staff involved to gather their feedback. The program staff highlighted several benefits of using Immerse.
1. Higher Engagement
The interactive nature of Immerse motivated students to engage with conversation practice. Karen Lemke, Student and Program Specialist at the institute, remarked,
"It was really interesting that the world around you [the 360° experience] is interactive. This was engaging and exciting for the students.”
2. Highly Enjoyable AI-Powered Self-Paced Learning
ESL instructor Cleyera Martin discussed how the VR club helped the institute achieve its goal of providing students with additional speaking practice that is not easily available during class time.
"Sometimes, we have student assistants in class, but not all classes have them, and there’s only one assistant per class, so students don’t really get a chance to talk to a native speaker and see that they’re being understood."
Working with Immerse’s AI-powered conversation partners helped learners bridge this gap and allowed for more authentic conversation practice. Martin continued on to say,
"The staff at the Institute were also impressed with how the AI avatars could accurately evaluate students' spoken language while guiding them through specific tasks. It’s helpful because when they’re talking to each other in class, they’re talking to another English language learner who isn’t going to have perfect grammar and who may not perfectly understand them, but the AI does ... in a sense, they get to almost talk and interact with a native speaker, so to speak. They can then get the correct input and the AI can tell them if they understand or not.”
Given the success of the pilot, the Intensive English Language Institute intends to continue using Immerse in the upcoming academic year. This time, they plan to incorporate Immerse officially into their course curricula and empirically measure the impact it has on student learning.
Interested in Providing Immersive Language Learning to your Learners?
Thanks to Immerse’s partnership program, educational institutions can offer their students language training through Immerse at a bulk discount.
Once enrolled, learners will have access to everything Immerse has to offer:
- Live, synchronous small-group classes taught by real educators
- Live, synchronous conversation events also taught by real educators
- 24/7 AI-powered avatar practices
- 24/7 language games
- Learning Journey tracker
You can learn more about the program and fill out an interest form here.
