Speaking a non-native language with a native speaker can be a nerve-wracking experience as you struggle to piece together the countless vocabulary and grammar lessons you learned over the years to find the right words to say in the given context.
Inspired by her experiences learning English and speaking it with native speakers, South Korea native and University of Georgia PhD student Eunkyoung Elaine Cha developed a research project meant to alleviate the anxiety that can come with learning and speaking a second language by using virtual reality and artificial intelligence. Her primary research interest is the psychological state of multilingual learners.
“That kind of environment, like virtual reality with avatars, not like face to face, really helps alleviate [that] anxiety because you can just hide behind those avatars,” Cha said.
Cha set up the program with Immerse, a VR language learning startup, to lay out the lessons and various chat rooms. She collaborated with Zheying Zhu, a doctoral student in the UGA Learning, Design, and Technology program, her advisor Dr. TJ Kopcha, and the Immerse research director, Dr. Tricia Thrasher for the initiative.
There are two versions of the program: using either VR headsets or computers, students can join live sessions that are taught by instructors at Immerse where they can interact with other people in the virtual world, or they can join public communities and have virtual social gatherings. They can also use AI features to practice their pronunciation or learn vocabulary through flashcards.
With Immerse, students can practice speaking English in real-life scenarios, such as in a coffee shop or a doctor’s office. According to Cha, this helps English learners practice and prepare for these everyday scenarios that can be applied to the real world.
In order to test her program, Cha recruited some UGA Intensive English Program students who speak English as their second language.
Hsing-Yin Lin, a UGA IEP student from Taiwan, described her experience using this program.
“In the in-person conversation, we need to directly respond [to] someone, but maybe I don’t know what word or vocabulary I can use, [but] if AI asked me a question, I can search online and organize what I want to respond and then respond,” Lin said.
The other version of Immerse involves virtual conversation clubs, which are virtual classrooms on Zoom where students can join and are taught by instructors and researchers.
Virginia Jackson is a master’s student at UGA studying world language education and helps teach some of the international students at UGA as the facilitator of a virtual conversation club. She meets with Cha before the club to discuss the theme the club will have that week.
“I teach them vocabulary related to that topic,” Jackson said. “They often have a lot of questions, and so we just kind of go on tangents sometimes.”
UGA Intensive English Program Coordinator Laura Fernanda Reyes said that AI and VR technology could be used as a supplemental tool outside of the classroom to help students practice their listening and speaking skills.
“This could be something that I would envision using maybe at the very beginning of class or at the end of class to kind of help students warm up, to get them speaking a little bit and just listening,” Reyes said. “And I see, too, its benefit if we’re able to maybe incorporate some of the content that we’re learning in class into the discussions that the AI bots are having with the students.”
In the future, Cha plans to recruit more students outside of the Intensive English Program, such as the international student population overall. She also hopes to expand it to include other languages, such as Korean and Chinese.
“Then I can see how these emerging technologies like virtual reality or artificial intelligence can help alleviate language anxiety or improve [people’s] sense of agency or self efficacy, those kinds of psychological states, and also, most importantly, how their perceived identity and cultural identity can be negotiated through those technologies,” Cha said.
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