The Effects of Spherical Video-Based Virtual Reality (SVVR) on Chinese University EFL Learners’ Writing Complexity

Writing is closely related to contextual experiences about the topics. However, in traditional EFL writing classes, learners’ lack of in-depth experience in learning contexts may be the leading cause rendering students’ poor writing performance. To address this problem, a quasi-experimental study was conducted to investigate the impacts of a spherical video-based virtual reality (SVVR)-supported instruction approach on the improvement of writing complexity with deeper contextual experiences. Underpinned by the sociocultural theory, an experimental group (n = 31) and a control group (n = 31) from a Chinese university participated in a 16-week study where the experimental group received an SVVR-integrated writing instruction while the control group the regular writing instruction. Between-group effects were examined mainly through procedures of MANCOVA. The findings show that the proposed SVVR approach could significantly improve students’ writing complexity in terms of lexical complexity and syntactic complexity, lending pedagogical support to the application of SVVR in EFL writing classrooms.