Virtual reality is not always a cure-all: evidences from a quasi-experiment of EFL business speaking courses

Hung, Shao-Ting Alan; Chen, Wan-Ju; Chien, Shih‐Chang

doi:10.1080/10494820.2023.2200811

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 35 publications

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“…Previous studies revealed how VR technology has been utilized to potentially treat the students' PSA (Hinojo-Lucena et al, 2020). Not only does VR technology offer an alternative environment for students' English practices (Oh, 2021;Thrasher, 2022), but it also provides authentic-like environment for more contextualized English speaking activities (Dooly et al, 2023;Hung et al, 2023). Due to the potential benefits of VR environments for English public speaking teaching, VR technology is expected to be more broadly used in the near future.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Virtual reality exposure therapy for reducing students’ public speaking anxiety: A systematic review

Lestiono,

Lee

2024

JALTCALL

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Public speaking often imposes a nerve-wracking atmosphere in the L2 classrooms. Consequently, an alternative to the anxiety-arousing activity by using advanced technology for pedagogy is urgent. Prior publications reported the use of virtual reality (VR) for training public speaking and alleviating students’ public speaking anxiety (PSA). However, no latest review in this area has been published. This present study employed a systematic review to delineate the trends in the latest decade (between 2011 and 2023), synthesizing research outcomes, methodologies, loci, participants, treatment duration, and research focuses. This systematic review was based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. Conceptual and theoretical studies were removed, yielding 16 studies with empirical data to be thoroughly examined. Most studies indicated the effectiveness of VR for teaching public speaking and reducing speech apprehension. Several gaps were disclosed, such as the inconsistency of the research findings regarding whether the short duration of VR exposure resulted in the statistically non-significant effects, the unequal distribution of research loci which were mostly reported from the US, the UK, and Europe, and the major focus on English as L1 instead of L2 public speaking training. The results of this review suggest that more pertinent studies in countries with EFL or L2 learning contexts and longer treatment duration be conducted and reported in the globally renowned English-language journals to verify the effectiveness of VR technology in treating PSA.

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