Beyond the classroom - exploring the impact of virtual reality exposure on foreign language anxiety with the mediating role of ESL Chinese learners’ communicative confidence and fluency

This study examines the relationships between virtual reality (VR) exposure, communicative confidence, perceived fluency, and foreign language anxiety among Chinese university students enrolled in English as a Foreign Language courses. One thousand eighty-six students from various academic disciplines at universities in Sichuan and Henan provinces participated in this cross-sectional study. The results reveal that VR exposure is positively associated with communicative confidence and perceived fluency, which are, in turn, negatively related to foreign language anxiety. Mediation analysis further demonstrates that communicative confidence and perceived fluency significantly mediate the relationship between VR exposure and foreign language anxiety. However, the direct effect of VR exposure on foreign language anxiety was not significant. These findings suggest that VR exposure indirectly reduces FL anxiety by boosting learners’ confidence and perceived fluency in English. The study underscores the need for urgent and extensive future research to consider longitudinal designs, more objective measures of language competence, and a more diverse sample to increase the generalizability of the findings. This study underscores the potential of VR to alleviate language anxiety and enhance communicative outcomes in ESL learners, highlighting the importance of further exploration in this area.