Congratulations to Tricia Thrasher (PhD candidate, French SLATE) for receiving one of the five Duolingo Research Grants in Language Learning with Technology in the country in 2020 for her Ph.D. thesis project “Social Virtual Reality’s Impact on Language Anxiety and Interpersonal Oral Production by French Learners”. This nationwide recognition draws attention to cutting-edge research on language learning in the 21^st century. One of Tricia’s research questions is to find out if using virtual reality technology in the classroom can help diminish learners' anxiety speaking French in (simulated) real-life contexts and improve their oral proficiency in the language.