Most Learners Don’t Get Enough Speaking Practice

Online language courses often fall short in offering students enough chances to practice speaking.

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In recent years, many universities have begun offering fully online language courses. While these programs are convenient—allowing students from anywhere to participate from the comfort of their homes—they come with limitations. A significant drawback is the heavy reliance on asynchronous learning, where students complete exercises in online workbooks and textbooks. Although these tasks are useful for memorizing vocabulary and verb conjugations, they often fail to provide meaningful speaking and listening practice. 

Even after finishing the course, many online learners still struggle to communicate effectively in the language they’ve been studying.

To address this gap, universities are turning to innovative solutions to enhance speaking and listening practice in online language courses. One such approach is integrating immersive technologies that create interactive, engaging environments where students can practice real-life conversations outside of class time. 

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By combining these tools with traditional coursework, language learners can develop their communicative abilities in a more dynamic way, bridging the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application. 

Animated GIF of Anika, an AI avatar in the IMMERSE language learning platform, speaking in a virtual office setting with a city skyline and beach visible through the window. A microphone button is labeled “Tap once to respond.” Anika makes natural gestures as she talks, demonstrating lifelike AI-driven communication in a professional context.
IMMERSE Community Avatars remember the learners and get to know them over time

This is where IMMERSE steps in, offering a powerful solution to boost language learning by providing students with the additional speaking practice that traditional online courses often lack.

IMMERSE and UIUC

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) was looking for a way to provide their first-semester Spanish students with more opportunities for speaking practice. As this course is traditionally taught online, students  usually have only one hour a week together to practice speaking. As a result, the program found that by the end of the semester, many students had not developed the necessary speaking skills to confidently advance to the second-semester course.


To address this issue, the program explored out-of-class resources to improve oral communication practice and decided to partner with IMMERSE to offer their students additional speaking practice each week. During Fall semester of 2024, students spent a minimum of 2 hours per week taking instructor-led live lessons in IMMERSE and engaging with AI-powered conversation and pronunciation practice. 

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71 students from four first-semester Spanish classes participated in this project and the department conducted an efficacy study to evaluate IMMERSE’s impact on their learning. Two of the four classes served as the “experimental group” and had two hours of their traditional asynchronous online homework replaced by two hours of IMMERSE. The other two classes (the control group) continued following the original Spanish 101 curriculum for this semester. 

A Spanish language learning scene in IMMERSE showing a guided AI conversation. A learner responds incorrectly to a prompt about a pool table, and the AI avatar provides instant feedback: “Remember to use ‘hay’ correctly. It should be ‘No creo que haya.’”
Guided Conversations develop learners’ grammar and vocabulary skills

The Spanish program conducted pre- and post-tests to assess the impact of using IMMERSE not only on students’ speaking skills but also on their pronunciation accuracy, confidence, anxiety, motivation, and overall engagement. By using a control-experimental design, the Program Directors were able to see whether IMMERSE effectively enhanced their students' speaking proficiency. They were pleased with the results and decided to continue using IMMERSE in the Spring semester. Read below to learn about what they found: 

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Key Insights

Less Foreign Language Anxiety

The control group experienced a 34% greater increase in anxiety throughout the semester compared to the experimental group. 

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Better Motivation

 IMMERSE students sustained their motivation 46% more throughout the semester than those in the control group.  

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More Willingness to Communicate

IMMERSE students significantly improved their willingness to communicate (d = 1.46 (large effect)). 

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Increased Fluency

IMMERSE students produced twice as many words on the final oral exam, demonstrating significantly higher speaking fluency compared to the control group.

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Better Speaking Performance

 IMMERSE students significantly outperformed the control group (p < .001)  by 54% on average on their final oral exam. 

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Increased Proficiency

Using ACTFL Can-Do statements, students using IMMERSE reported greater proficiency gains across multiple levels (NL-IL) than the control group by the semester's end.

Female IMMERSE self-guided AI tutor responding to learner questions in a 3D environment, providing personalized instruction and feedback during a structured lesson.
Self-Guided Lessons provide personalized speaking instruction 24/7

Learner Response

Participants also highlighted many benefits of using IMMERSE in their end of semester interviews, specifically: 

A social and interactive learning experience

  • "I liked that it was very social, and there was a lot of interaction between other people."
  • "I liked being paired up with different people. That was helpful and made me more comfortable talking to people in Spanish."

Expert instructors

Learners liked how IMMERSE’s guides come from a variety of Spanish-speaking backgrounds. They enjoyed the diversity and thought it contributed to their overall Spanish comprehension and pronunciation. 

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  • "I did notice that each guide kind of has their own diverse background, so their pronunciation is not necessarily the same, which I genuinely liked." 
  • "Having Guides who came from a variety of diverse backgrounds made the experience better." 

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Increased speaking confidence

Learners found IMMERSE classes to be particularly valuable for providing speaking practice, reducing anxiety, and fostering greater comfort and confidence in language use.

  • "I feel like the classes do help build more confidence when you're speaking. I think it might be because it's guided and you can ask questions."
  • "I think that doing it in the virtual environment, even, like with classmates and other people was a lot less anxiety inducing." 

AI practice improved learning and engagement

Learners thought IMMERSE’s guided conversations and pronunciation practices prepared them well for class.

  • "The activities were sometimes repetitive, but in a good way, because it helped me with pronunciation and forming sentences before I went into the live class."
  • "I feel like it helped me learn better and made me more engaged in class. I wasn't confused anymore. In class, I was actually participating because I knew some answers." 

User friendly

  • "It was actually really user friendly, and it wasn't hard to get the hang of."
  • "I was surprised at how easy it was to use."