A whole new world in VR…
A strange cartoon avatar of a young girl with cat ears and a tail is jumping back and forth in front of me. I say hello, and she waves. What do I do next? She bounces away without saying a word. Others are grouped together in various parts of the VR space, and I wonder if it’s rude to go over and listen in on their conversation. What are the rules? How will I be received? Who are these people?
This bizarre VR experience got me thinking. “Is VR going to revolutionize the teaching of foreign languages?”
Olexa & Taquet (2026) introduced the concept of virtual ryugaku (translates as study abroad in English). An alternative or supplement to the idea of leaving your home country to live and study in a foreign country. A place that bridges physical distance and creates a multimodal environment to communicate in a more immersive way. A step beyond a screen and keyboard to an environment that has spatial audio, hand, and facial expressions. A whole new world, well, sort of. This new learning opportunity is giving L2 learners autonomy and increased opportunities to use their language skills in an unstructured environment(Peeters 2019).
The literature that I read for this week’s class almost unanimously concluded that the technology offers significant benefits for language learning. Bahari’s (2021) review of 75 students that have looked at the use of VR to learn foreign languages found several advantages to improving speaking and listening proficiency with less effect in reading and writing improvement. It seemed to confirm that this technology could make a real difference in how a person learned a language.
But I didn’t like the experience, and I’m not the only one. The research shows that a not-small percentage of participants find the experience anxiety-inducing, making them physically ill from motion sickness and having emotionally uncomfortable encounters with strangers on the internet (Olexa & Towquet, 2026). For those of us who found the VR experience unnerving and disorienting, this learning opportunity might not be the solution.
I really wanted to love VR. I wanted it to transport me to another world where I could learn and play, and communicate with people from all over the world. Maybe someday the technology will advance to the point that I will really enjoy it, but that day isn’t today.
Olexa, R. A., & Taquet, D. (2026). Virtual reality study abroad and language contact patterns in Japanese EFL learners. Discover Education, 5(1), Article 128. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-026-01144-2
Bahari, A. (2022). Affordances and challenges of teaching language skills by virtual reality: A systematic review (2010–2020). E-Learning and Digital Media, 19(2), 163–188. https://doi.org/10.1177/20427530211036583
Peeters, D. (2019). Virtual reality: A game-changing method for the language sciences. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 26(3), 894–900. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-019-01571-3
