POTENTIALS AND CHALLENGES OF VIRTUAL REALITY: Implications for the language classroom

The attraction towards immersive virtuality is rooted in human history and connected to our imaginative world. The exponential advance of technology in the past decades has added a further dimension to this human trait, providing easier access to an ever-growing variety of three-dimensional digital environments. In the early noughties, the success of desktop-based Low-Immersion Virtual Reality environments such as Second Life or Open Simulator sparked the interest of language educators and researchers. This resulted in a considerable amount language learning experiences and research studies designed to observe and analyse how learning takes place in a digital 3D space. Two decades later, due to a considerable advancement in immersive technologies, users can engage in even more immersive language learning experiences. Albeit in the early stages, research in High-Immersion Virtual Reality is growing steadily, in an effort to understand how its potential can be effectively leveraged in the language classroom. This chapter offers an overview of affordances and constraints identified in research studies conducted on language learning in both Low-Immersion and High-Immersion Virtual Reality. Key issues in the use of Virtual Reality in the language classroom are discussed, as well as implications for the design of effective language learning tasks.