Words in Motion: Kinesthetic Language Learning in Virtual Reality

Embodied theories of language propose that the way we communicate verbally is grounded in our body. Nevertheless, the way a second language is conventionally taught does not capitalize on kinesthetic modalities. The tracking capabilities of room-scale virtual reality systems afford a way to incorporate kinesthetic learning in language education. We present Words in Motion, a virtual reality language learning system that reinforces associations between word-action pairs by recognizing a student's movements and presenting the corresponding name of the performed action in the target language. Results from a user study involving 57 participants suggest that the kinesthetic approach in virtual reality has less immediate learning gain in comparison to a text-only condition and no immediate difference with participants in a non-kinesthetic virtual reality condition. However, virtual kinesthetic learners showed significantly higher retention rates after a week of exposure than all other conditions and higher performance than non-kinesthetic virtual reality learners. Positive correlation between the times a word-action pair was executed and the times a word was remembered by the subjects, supports that virtual reality can impact language learning by leveraging kinesthetic elements.