Foreign Language Learning Gamification Using Virtual Reality—A Systematic Review of Empirical Research
, Bruno Peixoto 1,2, Miguel Melo 2, Luciana Cabral 3,4 and Maximino Bessa 1,2Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The abstract must be rewritten. It does not contain any significant findings of your systematic review. You only state that virtual reality is beneficiary for FLL. This is not sufficient. VR can be used to FLL is not the key finding of your paper I guess.
The introduction does not need to talk about obvious things, I would rather want to see something about eLearning 4.0, deep learning, machine learning, neural networks, Generation Z, etc. i.e. the topics that are connected to VR and augmented reality connected to learning. Your introduction is very obsolete.
Methodology: were PICOS followed? What wat the reason for the choice of these databases? Why there was no limitation of the years when there is a similar review study you mentioned earlier?
The findings are the strongest part of the manuscript and I like it very much.
The discussion is more or less a summary of your findings but done in a very nice way. However, I miss some opposing opinions about the use of VR in FLL. Can you discuss with some research that proves that the role of the use of ICT in FLL should not be exaggerated?
What are the implications of your findings? Hoe do they relate to eLearning 4.0? can you elaborate on that a bit so that it is clearly visible where this could potentially all lead to?
To sum it up, it is a very interesting article, a pleasure to read, but a few issues must be fixed.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Title: Foreign language learning gamification using virtual reality - a systematic review of empirical research
This systematic review of empirical research aims at understanding whether the using of gaming strategies in virtual reality is beneficiary for the learning of a second / foreign language or not. The study found more than half of the articles proved that virtual reality technologies with gaming strategies can be used to learn a foreign language among reviewed articles. The topic was interesting and would benefit readers who wish to understand the effectiveness of using VR or gamification in second or foreign language education.
- Introduction
The authors may want to merge the first and second paragraphs. The 1st paragraph only includes two sentences.
Line 23: Virtual Reality (VR) instead of VR as this is the first time the word comes out in the main text.
It would be necessary to have a brief introduction of VR (and also gamification) in education before presenting examples of VR in education. What is the definition or historical background of VR (and also gamification)?
Although the context of this research is foreign and second language learning, there is no clear descriptions on what are the benefits of VR for foreign and second language learning, It is not persuasive enough to introduce, there are some research that examined VR in is foreign and second language learning. It would be more persuasive to present, (1) the challenges of foreign and second language learning à (2) then present the benefits of VR to solve the challenges of is foreign and second language learning. So that the readers can see the clear connections.
It is also not clear why the authors include gamification. None of the descriptions explain or describe about gamification until the paper introduced the goals of the study on p. 3, line 97.
- Methodology
Line 114: PRISMA methodology is not common methodology in educational research. The reference cited for PRISMA methodology is coming from medical journal and only could give limited understanding on the methodology. It would be helpful for readers to have more elaboration on the PRISMA methodology and rationales to use the methodology over other analysis approaches.
- Search strategy
Line 139: given English or Portuguese key word, was Portuguese the one and only example of foreign language. If so, the authors should clarify the range of foreign language learning from the beginning of the paper to avoid overgeneralization of the “foreign” language.
It is common strategy to use “range of the year published” as inclusion/exclusion criteria, but the information is missing in this section.
2.6 Quality Assessment
How many researchers were involved in this process? How did the researchers check the trustworthiness or reliability of the quality assessment? Please report the reliability (or interrater reliability) score for the assessment. How many researchers were involved in the assessment or whether there was a rubric to assess. Without those information, the results can not be reliable.
Line 177-178: please elaborate the meaning of “well-defined criteria” or direct to the table or appendix or figure would be helpful.
Figure 5 and 7: How about changing from pie chart to different diagram (like horizontal bar graph)? Pie charts seem to be not the best diagram to report the results with more than 8+ variables with texts
Figure 8: Word cloud results does not inform meaningful findings. Since this is educational research the results only showed the keywords. “learning”, language, augmented, reality: it is not clear how can these be meaningful results to report to answer for research questions?
Discussion: How about organizing the discussion with subheadings?
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have addressed all the serious issues I raised. However, the newly added text contains quite a lot of language issues that must be fixed.
The introduction could still be improved - for now, it looks more like a random cluster of loosely connected ideas. It is a pity the development of the argumentation is not more logical and systematic. I would still recommend rewriting it a bit so that it clearly shows the background of your study. The same applies to the conclusion. I would have a look at it again and try to improve the argumentation there.
The methodology has been improved and seems sufficient. The strongest part is still the results section of the review and it makes the paper important and necessary for the academic community dealing with the issue of FLL and L2 acquisition.
Author Response
Dear Editor and Reviewer,
The manuscript went once again through deeper analysis by the authors with the objective of correcting typos, phrases formulation and reorganization of paragraphs. All the suggestions made by the reviewer were considered to improve the introduction and the conclusion of the article.
We thank you for your opportunity and attention.
Best Regards,
The Authors
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
