Hello everyone, my name is Tang Li, and I am a first-year master’s student.

To begin, I would like to briefly explain my research as part of my self-introduction.

I studied at the College of Information Science and Engineering at Ritsumeikan University and obtained a dual bachelor’s degree from Dalian University of Technology and Ritsumeikan University. At Ritsumeikan University, I belonged to the Computer Graphics (CG) laboratory and studied technologies related to Virtual Reality (VR) in my major courses. Through this, I developed a strong interest in VR and decided that I wanted to conduct VR-related research in graduate school.

My research theme is to develop and evaluate a Japanese mimetic word learning support system utilizing VR. Foreigners studying in Japan naturally need to interact with Japanese people. In communication with Japanese people, they often use mimetic words to express their feelings, which is also a difficult point for international students to understand. Based on my personal experience, many of the things that differed from the Japanese I learned in China were related to mimetic words. For example, when expressing an unpleasant feeling, I might say “I am angry” or “I feel bad,” but Japanese people often use words like “iraira” (frustrated/irritated). Similarly, when expressing boredom or dullness, I think Japanese people often use mimetic words like “unzari” (fed up/bored) to express their emotions.

Words like “iraira” and “unzari” are called mimetic words that express emotions and feelings. When mimetic words are used in communication, they should be immediately understandable to you as native Japanese speakers, but they are difficult for foreigners who are not native speakers to understand. Mimetic words have the characteristic that their meaning can be conveyed without much explanation, but due to cultural differences, foreigners cannot intuitively understand them like Japanese people do. Furthermore, because there are few vocabularies like mimetic words in other languages, there are cases where no translation can be found, making it difficult to understand their meaning. Therefore, I believe that in order for foreign Japanese learners to learn the meaning of mimetic words, they should directly experience the emotions expressed by the mimetic words (that is, make the learners generate the emotions expressed by the mimetic words) so that they can understand their meaning. I would like to develop a system that supports the learning of mimetic word meanings using VR technology.

The reason I think VR technology is useful for emotional experience is the high sense of presence brought about by VR technology. Presence refers to the psychological sensation of “being in that place,” and a high sense of presence can bring about strong emotional reactions. Furthermore, it is said that by referring to real-world scenarios that can generate emotions and designing virtual scenarios, it is possible to realize the generation of specific emotions. Based on these, I am proceeding with research on the development and evaluation of a VR system that supports the learning of mimetic word meanings.

In this English seminar, I read the following paper, so I would like to introduce it here.

Title: The impact of immersive virtual reality on EFL learners’ listening comprehension.
Author: Tai, Tzu-Yu & Howard Hao-Jan Chen
Year: 2021
Journal: Journal of Educational Computing Research, 59(7), 1272-1293

There are two reasons why I chose this paper. One is that it is an empirical study on the use of VR technology in language learning, and I wanted to know how to examine VR technology as a means to support language learning. The other is that I wanted to know how the high sense of presence brought about by VR technology is applied to language learning, what kind of effects are obtained, and what kind of measurement items are used.

I will briefly introduce the contents of this paper here.

In this study, the authors investigated the impact of Mobile VR (MVR) on the listening comprehension of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners. MVR provides a “3D mobile-based virtual environment that reproduces a realistic environment while simulating the physical sensation of being in an authentic place or situation,” and Google Cardboard and Samsung Gear VR fall under MVR. They point out that MVR is widely recognized as the most suitable VR technology for schools because it has the advantages of being lightweight, portable, and usable anywhere, and can provide a fully immersive VR experience.

From the perspective of language learning, the skill of listening is considered extremely important in language learning. However, for EFL learners, improving listening ability is considered difficult and is said to cause anxiety during communication. On the other hand, a challenge in language education felt by language teachers is how to create an authentic context for L2 listening and set learners in a communication context that could occur in the real world. To address these challenges, they argue through a review of previous studies that utilizing MVR is effective. However, empirical evidence supporting specific L2 learning effects by MVR is still limited, mainly focusing on motivation and vocabulary learning, and research on the effects on EFL listening comprehension is still insufficient. This paper investigated the impact of MVR on EFL learners’ listening comprehension (especially the effect of presence) and their perceptions of MVR-supported EFL listening learning by comparing MVR (Mondly) with video viewing.

As a result of the investigation, it was found that MVR promotes EFL learners’ listening comprehension and memory retention. In addition, the effect of listening learning through the MVR player is considered to be related to the high fidelity of expression, interaction with virtual characters, and the first-person perspective for examining objects and exploring the virtual environment, which are the main factors related to the sense of presence provided by the MVR app. Based on this, the authors concluded that the use of VR has a promoting effect on EFL listening comprehension. On the other hand, regarding perceptions and attitudes toward MVR, many learners perceived MVR as easy to use and operate, and gave positive evaluations, recognizing it as flexible and convenient learning by highly valuing the portability of MVR. However, a small number of learners reported that they were distracted by various stimuli and could not operate so many functions at the same time, which hindered their listening. Based on this finding, they suggest that while selecting MVR apps, language teachers need to carefully consider the degree and type of interaction with learners to avoid overloading learners, hindering the sense of presence, and consequently having a negative impact on learning.

Through this empirical study, it became clear that VR is useful for improving listening ability. Also, VR was able to help with long-term memory retention. Based on these findings, I believe that VR can become an important tool in language learning. In my research, based on the findings of this study, I believe that learning the meaning of words leads not only to understanding but also to long-term memory of words, so I think the conclusion that VR is effective for long-term memory retention can be utilized. On the other hand, since it is suggested that the sense of presence can encourage learners’ interest in learning and increase motivation, I feel that the merits of using VR are significant.

However, there are several points I did not understand in this paper. First, in this paper, the use of MVR aimed to examine the impact on listening comprehension, but the learning activity was not just performing listening comprehension activities, but also performing learning activities that required listening comprehension and speaking in specific situations. On the other hand, the video viewing group did not include speaking activities. This leaves me with the question: was this appropriate as a control group? I think it would have been possible to watch a conversation scene of others during VR… I feel it cannot be denied that there were also effects of speaking due to the elaborate content and functions rather than just the sense of presence. One might call realistic behavior a sense of presence, and I think that would be a factor that increases the sense of presence, but I also felt that as research, it is necessary to define what a sense of presence is, including elements like VR and learning behavior. When conducting comparative experiments, I thought I must organize the functions and think carefully about what could be an appropriate control group.

However, I believe that this paper presents important findings for my development of a system that selects VR and supports the learning of mimetic words. Based on this, I would like to think about effective learning environment design.