A Study Of The Effect Of3-D Immersive Virtual Worlds On Students’English Listening Ability

English listening teaching is one of the important parts of English teaching. To English learners, English listening should be the first skill to be mastered. But unfortunately, English listening becomes a hard obstacle to be conquered when Chinese students learn English. Students will lose their interests in English, if they go on like this. In the meanwhile, students will be affected in English speaking learning. This situation may result from the lack of environment in which English can be learned and used. How can we have this environment that can be just like foreign country, if we do not need go abroad? For this purpose, many researches and teacher have kept trying to put the latest technologies to use in English classroom and have tried to simulate a lifelike English environment as much as they can. In this process, computer multimedia in English learning is the best and the most popular method to be researched and used so far. But this computer multimedia technology which be widely used in classroom can only provide a two-dimensional (2-D) space for learners. In other words, students can only get the feeling from vision and hearing. It is far away from giving students immersive experience feelings of being foreign country. The latest technology Virtual Reality in computer science can simulate three-dimensional (3-D) space. It can set up a lifelike environment when they use it. That will solve the problem of the lack of English learning and using environment. Virtual Reality integrates computer graphics technique, simulation technology, man-computer exchange technology, sensing technology, artificial intelligence technology. It is a high-tech simulation system generated by the assistance of computer. It can generate lifelike senses such as vision, hearing and smell etc. It can make human freely communicate with the virtual worlds through some certain devices. The greatest contribution of Virtual Reality is providing experienced feelings of being the real worlds for human’s activities. The purpose of this research is to find out whether it can promote English listening teaching, simulate students’ learning interests, improve students’listening ability and increase the efficiency of English listening teaching.This research selects two parallel classes (N=60) in Peking3D English training school as subjects, lasting nearly ten months. The experiment uses different research instruments such as interview, questionnaire and English listening comprehension tests including pre-test and post-test to collect the data and analyze them in T-Test by using the software SPSS11.5for windows. Then the significant result is obtained from the experimental group who use the3-D Immersive Virtual Worlds in English listening compared with the control group who are taught by using the computer multimedia.The research gets the conclusion that3-D Immersive Virtual Worlds in English listening, stimulate students’learning interests and enthusiasm, upgrade their English listening ability, broadens their ranges of knowledge, increase the efficiency of English teaching. The score of post-test between the experimental group who use3-D Immersive Virtual Worlds in English listening and the control group who are taught by computer multimedia has significant difference. In view of the limitation of the research, some suggestions and hope for further research are proposed at last.