Abstract:

Glossophobia or the fear of speaking in public is believed to be one of the most frequent and common phobias likely to affect up to 75% of the human population (The Washington Post, 2014). To that extent, public speaking in a foreign language is likely to add another layer of discomfort and even cause anxiety.

Since the “Speaking” component is one of the four basic language skills worked on in English as a foreign language (EFL) class, this paper aims to explore a distinct strategy which might be helpful to overcome the fear of speaking in front of the class and hence contribute to the development of students’ oral skills.

Therefore, within the scope of the EFL course in the Administrative Assistance and Translation programme taught in a Portuguese Higher Education Institution, an experimental study was undertaken aiming to assess the potential benefits of adding virtual reality (VR) as an auxiliary tool for public speaking simulation. This experiment was divided into two groups: the control group in which students carried out the speaking exercises in the traditional way, giving a speech to their colleagues in the classroom, and the VR group. The last performed the same oral tasks as the control group but faced a virtualized audience provided by the Virtual Speech App for Meta’s Quest2 VR glasses.

This study intends to understand whether the use of VR could help students to decrease the level of public speaking fear by comparing the results collected from both groups: the students who were in a face-to-face environment and students who were in a virtual environment. In addition to the actual experiment, the methodology included a pre and a post-survey answered by both groups. These surveys were adapted from the Personal Report of Public Speaking Anxiety (PRPSA) model developed by James McCroskey (McCroskey, J. C.,1970).

41 students were involved in this case study, 17 of whom performed the speaking exercise using virtual reality and 19 performed the live experience.
In this first approach, the results were inconclusive, due to the small number of students involved, but are rather promising. Future research, with a wider sample, should determine whether this type of activity should be implemented in the syllabus of EFL.

Keywords:

English as a foreign language, virtual reality, public speaking.