Socio-Culturally Responsive VR Training for Enhancing English Teachers’ Pragmatic Competence

Abstract

Purpose This study investigates the effectiveness of socio-culturally responsive virtual reality (VR) training in enhancing the pragmatic competence of English teachers, addressing the challenge of limited authentic native-speaker interaction in English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts. Design/Approach/Method A sequential explanatory mixed-methods design was employed with 122 randomly selected EFL teachers. Quantitative data were collected through pre- and posttraining verbal discourse completion tasks (DCTs), while qualitative insights were gathered through focus group interviews. The VR intervention consisted of 108 hr of fully immersive simulations featuring artificial intelligence (AI)-driven avatars portraying diverse sociocultural scenarios, speech acts, power relations, and social distances based on a human-on-the-loop (HOTL) approach. Findings Participants demonstrated statistically significant improvements in pragmatic competence, including pragmalinguistic accuracy and sociopragmatic appropriateness. These improvements were driven by immersive engagement, real-time adaptive feedback, enhanced communicative confidence, increased metapragmatic awareness, and reflective practice fostered by the VR experience—factors that together deepened participants’ understanding and application of sociocultural norms. Originality/Value This study innovatively integrates AI-driven, immersive VR to enhance EFL teachers’ pragmatic competence, offering adaptive, socio-culturally rich simulations. It pioneers scalable, technology-enhanced teacher training, transforming the development of intercultural communication skills in EFL contexts through authentic, real-time interaction and feedback.