Alleviating Foreign Language Anxiety and Improving Performance through a Collaborative VR-assisted Academic Oral Presentation Course

One of the challenges of postgraduate students is to deliver an academic presentation efficiently in English, and overcome their foreign language anxiety. This study was an attempt to investigate the role of a VR-assisted course in developing academic oral presentation competence, as well as alleviating foreign language anxiety. The participants of this qualitative case study were 5 PhD students who attended a 6-session course in which they could collaboratively practice their academic oral presentation skills in Alzahra VR Academy (1.0), a self-designed interactive virtually simulated learning environment. In addition to the audio-recorded class observations, semi-structured interviews were conducted before and after the course, and the learners submitted reflection notes. The results indicated that practicing in the collaborative virtual learning environment of the course contributed to not only improving the participants' academic oral presentation skills, but also lessening their foreign language anxiety. The findings can have beneficial implications for English Language Teaching practitioners, as well as other educators concerned with promoting oral presentation skills.