VR and Vocabulary Acquisition: Exploring Participant Vocabulary Outcomes, Tendencies, and Perceptions of Game Narrative and Task

Abstract

Recent developments in Virtual Reality (VR) technologies are creating a shift in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) studies. Multiple studies have been performed that examine language learning in two dimensional (2D) and three dimensional (3D) software based virtual worlds (Lim, 2009; Lloyd et al. 2017; Sadler, 2017; Schwienhorst, 2002; Lin and Lan, 2015). Theories of embodied cognition, where essentially the human body and its capacity for any type of environmental interaction influence how a learner can process information, suggest that these new VR technologies may create enhanced learning through embodiment (Atkinson, 2010; Shapiro, 2011). However, significant research utilizing VR Head Mounted Displays (HMDs) has been limited to concrete experience words (Moseley et al, 2016; Repetto et al, 2015) while much remains to be studied within Second Language Acquisition. Considering that the most frequently touted benefit of VR-HMDs is an affordance for full integration in highly immersive environments (Lloyd et al. 2017; Sadler, 2017), and the preponderance of data available regarding VR before the advent of HMDs centered on digital games as environments that provide foci for participant immersion, it becomes increasingly critical to determine what constitutes those immersive environments, learner immersion, and what, if any, are the different learner tendencies that influence those affordances (Boot et al, 2011; Cornillie et al, 2012; Culbertson et al, 2016; DeHaan et al, 2010; Gonzalez-Lloret, 2017; Koops et al, 2016; Lim, 2009; O’Brien et al, 2009; Peterson, 2010; Ryan, M.L, 2001; Reinders, 2017; Reinhardt & Sykes, 2013; Wang et al, 2017).In this study, multiple instruments will be used to measure and determine what benefits VR-HMDs afford second language learners during vocabulary recall. Three evenly distributed groups of participants will perform the same tasks under three different conditions in the target language using comparative analysis between a Picture Recognition Task (control group), a Standard PC game task (experimental group 1), and a VR-HMD task (experimental group 2) using the commercially available game Fallout4 and Fallout4VR (published by Bethesda, 2017). Additionally, participants in the two experimental groups will be given an emotionally affective narrative to determine in what ways VR may enhance/diminish emotion and recall. All participants will provide survey data regarding their immersive tendencies, game-play preferences (if any), their immersion experience, and they will perform pre/post vocabulary tests. These conditions will provide insight into the intersections of qualities of immersion, gamer tendencies and perspectives, and VR-HMDs.