Enriching intercultural language learning through high immersion social virtual reality

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) has emerged as a promising tool in language education, offering immersive, interactive, and motivational learning experiences (Dhimolea et al., 2022; Sadler & Thrasher, 2023). High-immersion social virtual reality (HISVR) further enhances these affordances by enabling real-time, embodied collaboration through avatar-based interaction (Gruber & Kaplan-Rakowski, 2020; Lee et al., 2024). This exploratory case study investigates how learners negotiate intercultural meaning in an HISVR-mediated virtual exchange (VE), using Norris's (2004, 2019) Multimodal (Inter)action Analysis and Holliday's (2016) concepts of blocking and threading narratives to frame the analysis. Drawing on a qualitative case study of two international student groups engaged in three VE tasks in AltspaceVR, data were collected through VR session recordings, student reflection diaries, and focus group interviews. The multimodal analysis examined how students used linguistic and embodied resources—such as gesture, spatial positioning, and object manipulation—to construct intercultural understanding. Findings show that while blocking narratives were present—often expressed through conversational rigidity, cultural distancing, or spatial dominance— threading narratives were more frequent. These were characterised by inclusive language use, curiosity, collaborative movement in the environment, and coordinated multimodal actions. Students leveraged the affordances of HISVR to build rapport, clarify cultural references, and manage interactional challenges. The results demonstrate that HISVR fosters a dynamic, embodied form of intercultural communication that extends beyond the capabilities of other conventional technologies like videoconferencing. The study highlights the potential of HISVR for innovating language education by supporting task-based, interculturally oriented pedagogies that integrate multimodal and spatial dimensions of communication.