A Study Of Applying Virtual Reality Technology To English Vocabulary Teaching In Junior Middle School

Language plays an important role in cultural exchanges,while vocabulary is believed to be the indispensable part in language knowledge.According to The National English Curriculum Standard for Senior High School and The National English Curriculum Standard for Compulsory Education,teachers ought to be accustomed to the advancement of information technology and provide students with abundant learning resources.Virtual reality technology,the emerging technology in 21^st century,has been applied to a variety of fields,such as science and engineering.However,it is still in the preliminary stage of development in language teaching.In this case,doing more studies of applying virtual reality technology to language teaching becomes increasingly important.The dissertation firstly defines what is the mastery of vocabulary and virtual reality technology,then doing a literature review based on technology acceptance model,multimodality,cognitive load theory,and the development of VR-based language teaching at home and abroad,in the end analyzing the feasibility of integrating virtual reality technology and vocabulary teaching.There are three research questions as follows:?1?What is teachers'perception of applying virtual reality technology to English vocabulary teaching??2?What is students'perception of applying virtual reality technology to English vocabulary teaching??3?How can virtual reality technology benefit students'English vocabulary learning,in terms of vocabulary retention and its appropriate use?Conclusions are drawn based on a series of qualitative and quantitative methods,including an interview for 5 teachers and 6 students respectively,a questionnaire for 43students and an experiment with tests for 16 students.Making the best use of data and information collected and SPSS,the researcher finds:?1?teachers are fully aware of the advantages brought by the immersed virtual environment,and the situation-based learning is conducive to students'vocabulary studying;?2?a majority of students hold a positive attitude towards VR-based vocabulary teaching,believing it makes vocabulary learning fun thus boosting learning efficiency;?3?statistical evidence from3 post-tests?1 immediate post-test and 2 delayed post-tests?demonstrates that scores of students in experimental group?VR group?are significantly higher than those in control group.Moreover,the performance can increase by 90 percent in word retention and 116 percent in word use for the highest.Some implications are summarized for teachers and students as follows:?1?teachers should learn to use virtual reality technology for teaching vocabulary;?2?teachers should learn to use virtual reality technology extensively but appropriately for teaching vocabulary;?3?students should be confident of using virtual reality technology for learning vocabulary,and should benefit from the“Game and Learning”integrated learning method.In the end,further expectations are for the developers such as optimizing user experience,grading language levels and developing textbook-based VR applications.