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This study explores the collaboration between Chinese and English partner teachers in a Chinese immersion school. They demonstrated commitment, communication, and collaboration, emphasizing student success. They bridged the curriculum by identifying shared standards, essential questions, and assessments, ensuring coherence across Chinese and English instruction. Pedagogical translanguaging strategies were employed, leveraging multilingual resources and encouraging cross-linguistic transfer. Students utilized their linguistic repertoire in meaningful ways, resulting in deeper content knowledge and language development. The study highlights students' positive experiences, recognizing the relevance of both languages and fostering bilingual identities. These findings emphasize the importance of translanguaging practices and the creation of flexible, multilingual spaces through collaborative planning to enhance content and language integration in immersion education.

Many language learners lack the motivation to read complex texts. Because high-immersion Virtual Reality (VR) is increasingly reported to be highly motivating, the goal of our study was to compare English as a Second Language (ESL) learners' (N=79) motivation while reading a story with subtitles in VR (experimental group) versus reading the same story screencast in two-dimensions (2D -- control group). The Wilcoxon signed-rank test revealed that learners' motivation in VR was significantly higher compared with the control group. Our finding confirmed that VR is highly motivational in the context of reading foreign texts and can be useful for Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) researchers, practitioners, and instructional designers. This analysis is a part of a larger study (Kaplan-Rakowski & Gruber, 2023) on VR facilitating reading tasks. [For the complete volume, "Intelligent CALL, Granular Systems and Learner Data: Short Papers from EUROCALL 2022 (30th, Reykjavik, Iceland, August 17-19, 2022)," see ED624779.]

Computer-mediated communication tools facilitate international collaboration projects between foreign language learners and peers abroad (O'Dowd, 2018). Social Virtual Reality (VR) applications allow for synchronous interactions and task-based communication in which learners can experience telepresence and immersion and conversate in a foreign language. Based on previous pilot experiences (Jauregi-Ondarra, Gruber, & Canto, 2020, 2021), this Virtual Exchange (VE) project aims to investigate how the specific affordances of Social High-immersion VR (SHiVR) in conjunction with designed tasks influence interaction patterns, and learning episodes. The VE took place between two groups of university students in the Netherlands (N=15) and Cyprus (N=14) through SHiVR in March 2022. The main aims of the tasks were to raise student intercultural awareness, stimulate task-based communication processes using English as a lingua franca and digital pedagogical competences of language education students. Different sources of data were gathered and analysed. In this paper, we describe and present the pedagogical experience and the initial results. [For the complete volume, "Intelligent CALL, Granular Systems and Learner Data: Short Papers from EUROCALL 2022 (30th, Reykjavik, Iceland, August 17-19, 2022)," see ED624779.]

Virtual Reality (VR) offers language learners a valuable environment for practicing language skills and other aspects essential for language development, interaction, and negotiation of meaning. For example, speaking practice in VR using avatars can reduce speaking anxiety and increase users' sense of agency. Social spaces in VR present possibilities for verbal and nonverbal communication. This conceptual paper discusses the advantages and drawbacks of both types of communication in high-immersion VR and the implications for language learners. Language learners rely on multiple modes of communication, including nonverbal behavior such as gestures. However, VR often lacks behavioral anthropomorphism, i.e. when an avatar cannot speak, move, or act in a human-like way, which may negatively impact communication, especially at beginner level. [For the complete volume, "Intelligent CALL, Granular Systems and Learner Data: Short Papers from EUROCALL 2022 (30th, Reykjavik, Iceland, August 17-19, 2022)," see ED624779.]

Social Virtual Reality (VR) applications enable real-time interpersonal conversation and allow users to perform activities together. They have the potential of changing the ways learners practise speaking a foreign language. Following a previous study (Jauregi Ondarra, Gruber, & Canto, 2020), we designed the present study to explore how presence, immersion, and interactivity affect overall social experience. Students from Germany and the Netherlands engaged in High-immersion VR (HiVR) virtual exchange sessions, using Spanish as a lingua franca at A2 level. International dyads carried out four interaction tasks in AltspaceVR, using head-mounted devices. To examine students' HiVR virtual exchange experiences, different sources of data were gathered: questionnaires, reflection diaries, recordings, and focus group interviews. The preliminary results, based on the surveys and reflection journals, show that students liked to use a social VR app to communicate in the target language with peers from other countries, as they felt completely immersed and co-present in the social interactive VR space. This might enhance engagement and lower anxiety levels. [For the complete volume, "CALL and Professionalisation: Short Papers from EUROCALL 2021 (29th, Online, August 26-27, 2021)," see ED616972.]

As two-way immersion (TWI) programs continue to grow in the U.S., it is urgent that teachers counter deficit ideologies about bilingual children who come marginalized backgrounds. Neoliberalism ideologies have contributed to the growth of TWI programs because parents from mostly white and upper middle-class backgrounds see the economic/global advantage in their children becoming bilingual (Valdez, et al, 2016). This paper examines one teacher's interpretation of a gentrifying TWI program. Data includes researcher fieldnotes, memos, video/audio recordings and informal interviews over the course of 6 weeks in a 3rd grade classroom. Drawing from a Xicana feminist framework, allows us to consider how Latinx teachers have the potential to draw from their identity and experiences to advocate for equitable TWI programs.

This short paper reports the findings of a study exploring English for Academic Purposes (EAP) students' behavioral intention to use a high-immersion Virtual Reality (VR) system for learning paragraph structure. The study measured relationships between variables that may lead to learners' intention to use the high-immersion VR Reality system through leveraging a hypothesized theoretical framework based upon a widely used technology acceptance model. Quantitative data were collected from 134 Sino-British English as a medium of instruction by university undergraduate students enrolled in EAP classes by means of a post-participation questionnaire. A Partial Least Squares - Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) exploratory analysis was executed. Results suggested that students' intention to use the high-immersion VR learning environment was primarily determined by its usefulness for learning and not how easy it was to use. Furthermore, the degree to which the learners felt confident in their ability to operate the system had a large impact on how easy they perceived it was to use. And finally, the antecedent conditions of learners had little impact on the students' perceived usefulness of the VR system. [For the complete volume, "CALL for Widening Participation: Short Papers from EUROCALL 2020 (28th, Online, August 20-21, 2020)," see ED610330.]

This paper assesses the efficiency of the "Language Immersion e-Course" developed at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) Language Centre. The new self-study revision e-course, promoting students' proficiency in spoken and aural Russian through autonomous learning, is based on the Michel Thomas method, and is focused primarily on lexical work, which students commonly consider to be one of the biggest challenges in language studies. The course, targeted at the intermediate (A2/B1) level of proficiency in Russian (with a specific focus on language for Social Sciences) was incorporated into students' guided revision programme. The package is downloadable as a mobile application offering more flexibility for the users. This paper focuses on the pedagogical evaluation of the project (through students' feedback and their exam performance), and analyses the learning implications of such e-courses as a valuable alternative and added value to classroom teaching. Given that lexical command plays a fundamental role both in fluent language production (speaking and writing) and efficient comprehension (listening and reading), the paper asserts the benefits of such e-courses for blended learning programmes, as well as for improving overall efficiency of students' second language acquisition. [For the complete volume of short papers, see ED572005.]

Immersion models require the concurrent teaching of mathematics and of a second language. Research evidence suggests that few teachers possess sufficient pedagogical knowledge and skill to manage both these tasks adequately. The argument in this position paper is that the construct of 'language-as-resource' offers a more equitable bridging pathway into mathematical sense-making than do many immersion models, and this is illustrated using examples from South African schools.

This pilot study delivers a preliminary report on students' attitudes toward Virtual Reality Assisted Language Learning (VRALL). Learners (N=22) participated in a VRALL lesson and then completed a post-experience survey. Virtual Reality (VR) technology allows for learning experiences that increasingly remove geographic limitations to foreign language learners. Thanks to multisensory features of VR, including 360-degree, three-dimensional visualizations, students' experiences are highly immersive. Descriptive statistics provide preliminary evidence that VR technology is engaging and immersive for learners. Moreover, VR could play a role in Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL), especially when pitfalls such as cybersickness are overcome. [For the complete volume of short papers, see ED590612.]

Fiber-reinforced polymer composites have been used for various applications. There is increasing interest in the study of the seawater immersion effect of these materials. In this research, the alteration of tensile and shear behavior properties due to seawater absorption of the immersed Kevlar/Vinyl ester composite was evaluated. The composite materials were manufactured using vacuum assisted infusion method. ASTM D3039 and ASTM D5379 were used as the standards for tensile and shear tests. Tensile and shear performances were evaluated before and after immersion in seawater for 11 days. The experimental results show that tensile strength decreased by 7.5% from an average value of 421.18 MPa to 389.27 MPa. Whereas, the shear strength decreased by 1.6% from an average value of 14.6 MPa to 14.46 MPa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]