Virtual reality helps English teachers strengthen the social side of language
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A rendered first-person view of the VR scenarios developed for the socio-culturally responsive VR intervention described in the study.
view moreCredit: Mohsen Mahmoudi-Dehaki and Nasim Nasr-Esfahani
Knowing English involves more than knowing the right words and grammar. Effective communication also requires understanding how language changes according to the people involved, the situation, and the cultural context. A new study suggests that immersive virtual reality (VR) can help English teachers develop this often-overlooked dimension of language use.
The study, Socio-Culturally Responsive VR Training for Enhancing English Teachers' Pragmatic Competence, found that teachers who participated in a 108-hour immersive VR training program showed statistically significant improvements in pragmatic competence, including both their ability to use appropriate linguistic forms and their ability to respond appropriately to social and cultural expectations.
The research, conducted by Mohsen Mahmoudi-Dehaki and Nasim Nasr-Esfahani, was first published online on August 27, 2026, in ECNU Review of Education.
Pragmatic competence is the ability to use language appropriately in real-world situations. A request, refusal, apology, or complaint, for example, can be expressed in many grammatically correct ways, but the most appropriate choice depends on factors such as social relationships, power, distance, and cultural expectations.
For teachers in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts, developing this competence can be challenging because opportunities for authentic interaction may be limited. While classroom instruction can explain pragmatic rules, providing repeated opportunities to practice context-sensitive communication in realistic situations is more difficult.
To investigate whether immersive technology could help address this challenge, the researchers employed a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design involving 122 randomly selected EFL teachers. Participants completed verbal discourse completion tasks (DCTs) before and after the training, allowing the researchers to assess changes in pragmatic competence. Focus group interviews were then used to explore participants' experiences and help explain the quantitative findings.
The 108-hour intervention used fully immersive VR simulations featuring artificial intelligence (AI)-driven avatars. The simulations incorporated diverse sociocultural scenarios as well as different speech acts, power relations, and levels of social distance. The intervention followed a human-on-the-loop (HOTL) approach, maintaining human involvement in the AI-supported learning process.
Following the training, participants demonstrated statistically significant improvements in pragmatic competence. The gains were evident in two key dimensions: pragmalinguistic accuracy, or the ability to select and use appropriate linguistic forms, and sociopragmatic appropriateness, or the ability to respond appropriately to the social and cultural expectations of a situation.
The qualitative findings provided further insight into these improvements. Participants identified immersive engagement, real-time adaptive feedback, increased communicative confidence, greater metapragmatic awareness, and reflective practice as important aspects of the VR experience.
These findings suggest that the value of the VR intervention was not simply that teachers were practicing English in a virtual environment. Rather, the simulations created opportunities for participants to make communicative choices within sociocultural situations, receive adaptive feedback, and reflect on why particular choices were appropriate in context.
“Pragmatic competence is not simply a matter of knowing what a particular expression means,” claim Mohsen Mahmoudi-Dehaki and Nasim Nasr-Esfahani. “Teachers also need to understand how their linguistic choices interact with social relationships, cultural expectations, and the context of an interaction. Our findings suggest that immersive VR can create meaningful opportunities to practice these context-sensitive choices through interaction, feedback, and reflection.”
A distinctive feature of the study is its integration of AI-driven interaction with a socio-culturally responsive approach. Rather than using VR solely to reproduce conventional language exercises, the intervention incorporated sociocultural dimensions of communication, including speech acts, power relations, and social distance.
The researchers emphasize that VR is not a replacement for human interaction or conventional teacher education. Instead, immersive technology may provide an additional environment for professional learning, particularly in EFL contexts where opportunities for authentic interaction may be constrained.
Further research is needed to determine whether improvements in pragmatic competence are sustained over time and how effectively skills developed in immersive simulations transfer to teachers’ real-world professional and classroom interactions.
The findings contribute to research on technology-enhanced language teacher education by demonstrating the potential of immersive, AI-supported environments to support the development of English teachers’ pragmatic competence. They also highlight the importance of combining technological innovation with sociocultural awareness, adaptive feedback, and reflective practice when designing professional learning experiences.
A rendered third-person view of the VR scenarios developed for the socio-culturally responsive VR intervention described in the study.
Credit
Mohsen Mahmoudi-Dehaki and Nasim Nasr-Esfahani
Journal
ECNU Review of Education
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
Socio-Culturally Responsive VR Training for Enhancing English Teachers’ Pragmatic Competence
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