Personalizing VR educational tools for English language learners

Virtual Reality (VR) provides a unique opportunity for non-native speakers of a language to learn within an immersive platform. This may be particularly useful for English Language Learners (ELLs), who may face many difficulties learning English and acclimating to their new environment and culture. However, many current educational tools use a static, one size-fits-all approach to teach students. We believe that empirical research in VR pedagogy—specifically focused on how to personalize and adapt to, and support second language learners (e.g., ELLs) in these interactive and immersive systems—is an important step in providing educational equity to those that may easily fall behind their peers due to cultural and language barriers. In this paper, we discuss the current state of ELL education, and propose personalized and adaptable VR educational tools to help reach a wide range of users with different skills, abilities, and needs.