Second language acquisition experts agree that immersion can greatly help learners become proficient in their target language. For many people, however, traveling to another country and staying there for some time just to learn a new language is simply not an option.
Thanks to virtual reality and language learning apps like Mondly, it’s now possible to practice key language skills in real-life scenarios from anywhere and at any time. Now, ATi Studios, the company behind Mondly, is bringing its app to the Oculus Quest Store, with the official release scheduled on August 26th.
The Mondly VR app first launched in 2017, combining voice chatbot technology with speech recognition in virtual reality to create a new way to learn a new language.
“The toughest challenge was to make the speech interaction feel natural in VR,” said Alexandru Iliescu, the CEO and co-founder of ATi Studios. “Because VR is so immersive, we quickly realized that traditional speech interaction models that require a tap or a voice command to enable speech recognition would kill the flow of the experience.”
Using the Mondly language learning app, Oculus Quest users will soon be able to start building fluency in 29 languages (English, English (US), Arabic, Chinese (China), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French (France), German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Korean, Norwegian (Bokmål), Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Romanian, Russian, Spanish (Spain), Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese).
Instead of traditional lessons, users are presented with various real-life scenarios that require them to put their language skills to use. Thanks to Quest’s microphone, it’s possible to practice speaking in a way that feels natural.
The price of the Oculus Quest version is yet to be revealed, but Mondly costs $7.99 on other storefronts, so it’s likely that it will be identical or at least very similar.
