Effectiveness of Immersive Learning in Enhancing Language Skills among Primary School Children

Abstract

This study aimed to explore the effectiveness of immersive learning in enhancing listening and speaking skills among fourth-grade primary school students. The study employed an experimental methodology with a quasi-experimental design based on one group of participants. The research sample included 40 students from a school in Al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia. To achieve the study's objectives, an oral language skills test was prepared, focusing on both listening and speaking skills. Additionally, an immersive learning-based educational content was designed, consisting of 20 educational sessions for the participating students. The results indicated the effectiveness of immersive learning in improving listening skills such as auditory discrimination of words, extracting the main idea from auditory content, identifying sub-ideas, deriving the meaning of new vocabulary from context, recognizing the sequence of ideas, reordering events, and discriminating details in auditory content. Similarly, the speaking skills that improved included expressing ideas clearly and avoiding colloquial language, delivering a clear oral message, narrating stories using formal expressions, sharing personal experiences, organizing and maintaining continuity of ideas in speech, demonstrating expressive performance with body language, and observing proper speech speed and accuracy. Statistically significant differences were found at the 0.05 level in favor of the post-test of language skills.