Practice French in Virtual Reality: Crêpes Challenge at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi

Practice French in Virtual Reality: Crêpes Challenge at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi

What if students became culinary influencers for the duration of a virtual reality experience?

At Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi, teachers of French as a Foreign Language (FLE) are exploring new ways to have their students practice French.

Developed in collaboration with VRAI Learning, Crêpes Challenge offers an original role-playing scenario: learners take on the role of culinary influencers tasked with creating a video clip for their community, entirely in French.

Their mission: prepare crêpes in a virtual kitchen, comment on their actions, and interact with a conversational AI avatar. An experience that combines virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and learning by doing.

In the Shoes of a Food Influencer

With a VR headset on, the student finds themselves in a virtual kitchen with a precise goal: present a crêpe recipe to their community.

They must identify ingredients, handle utensils, and perform the various preparation steps. But most importantly, they must describe what they are doing, explain their gestures, and express themselves in French throughout the experience.

A conversational AI avatar accompanies them during their mission. The student interacts with it, responds to its interventions, and improvises based on the recipe's progress.

This scenario engages various linguistic skills: oral comprehension, vocabulary, sentence construction, and spontaneous expression.

At the end of the course, the student receives a personalized language assessment. They can identify their strengths, understand their mistakes, and restart the experience to improve.

Learning by Doing: A Concrete Pedagogical Approach

Crêpes Challenge is based on task-based learning, an approach used in foreign language teaching.

The principle: accomplish a concrete mission using the language being learned.

In this experience, the student does not merely know the word "flour"; they must recognize the ingredient, handle it, and present it to their audience. Action verbs also take on full meaning when explaining the recipe steps.

The culinary influencer scenario adds a communication dimension: the learner must organize their speech, address an audience, and adapt their explanations.

French becomes a tool for action and communication.

Virtual reality allows these learnings to be contextualized in an interactive environment where every gesture can become an opportunity to practice the language.

VR and AI Avatar: Immersion, Conversation, and Assessment

In Crêpes Challenge, the two technologies fulfill complementary functions.

Virtual reality immerses the student in a kitchen where they can manipulate objects and make their recipe.

The conversational AI avatar allows them to practice speaking French during the activity and then provides a linguistic assessment at the end of the course.

This combination enables simultaneous work on comprehension, expression, and oral interaction.

The student can also experiment freely: mistakes are part of the journey, and the ability to start over allows them to put into practice the feedback received.

An Experience Designed with FLE Teachers

Crêpes Challenge is the product of collaboration between the educational teams at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi and VRAI Learning.

The teachers contribute their expertise in learning French as a foreign language and its educational objectives. VRAI Learning designs the immersive environment and interactions with the AI avatar.

The experience thus complements activities conducted in class by offering a new context for oral practice.

It also illustrates the possibilities of immersive training in higher education: creating situations in which students use their knowledge to accomplish a concrete task.

From Virtual Kitchen to Other Communication Scenarios

With Crêpes Challenge, an everyday activity becomes an exercise in communication in French.

This approach can be applied to many other contexts: preparing for a trip, welcoming a visitor, participating in a professional conversation, or interacting in a cultural situation.

By combining immersive scenarios and conversational AI avatars, institutions can offer new opportunities to practice a language tailored to their educational objectives.

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