European Digital Online-Game for Intercultural Learning and Translanguaging Erasmus Project

Project Title

European Digital Online-Game for Intercultural Learning and Translanguaging

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Integration of refugees

Project Summary

The increasing number of refugees and migrants within EU countries forces all stakeholders involved in language education and integration to rethink traditional concepts of language education. Successful integration of migrants, especially in participatory processes, strongly depends on learning local foreign languages and intercultural competencies, without neglecting heritage languages and cultures. Therefore, language education is paramount for the successful inclusion of refugees and migrants in European societies.

The EU·DO·IT project developed tools and materials to support language learning: The EU·DO·IT
Platform (‘Module 1’), the extension of the pre-existing MElang-E platform (‘Module 2’), plus a wide range of supporting materials for teachers.

The EU·DO·IT online language learning platform has been designed to support learners in very early stages of their language learning process, by offering a multilingual learning tool that allows learners to practice their basic English, German, French, Turkish, Spanish, Catalan and Luxembourgish in playful dialogue situations. The platform provides many opportunities for translanguaging by utilizing English (as a representative of the Germanic languages), French (as a representative of the Romance languages) and Arabic (as a representative of the Semitic languages) as supporter languages. Learners can build on their prior language knowledge through internationalism, cognates, or shared metaphors, and experience the importance of code-switching. The different varieties of the target languages – including non-native and learner varieties – are reflected in the platform, which recruited multilingual speakers for many of the voice acting roles.

The MElang-E online language learning platform is a serious game for practicing common communicative situations in English. It situates English as lingua franca in a multilingual Europe, including the full range of plurilingual meaning making. Within the EU·DO·IT project, a new chapter, “Istanbul” was added to the serious game, which reflects the rich linguistic resources of this metropolis, especially Turkish and Arabic.

Both products express positive attitudes towards linguistic diversity, acknowledge the value of plurilingual/translanguaging practices, and try to counter a monolingual habitus (Gogolin 1992) by making learners’ L1s a valued and visible part of the learning process.

EU·DO·IT provides an innovative and intuitive language learning system for the use in formal and informal contexts. For the use in classrooms, a teacher handbook and a range of easy-to-use worksheets and activity suggestions have been developed.

In short, EU·DO·IT actively contributes to multilingual education by engaging learners´ plurilingual repertoires through the integration of translanguaging activities, and to widening access to and full participation in society for refugees, recent migrants and other language learners through non-commercial language learning tools.

EU·DO·IT has been developed by project partners from Universitat Ramon Llull – Blanquerna, Freie Universität Berlin, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, İstanbul Üniversitesi-Cerrahpaşa, Lycée Michel Lucius Luxembourg, and Tallinn University. The team consisted of experts in language acquisition & teaching, intercultural competencies & training, game development & digital education, and language teaching of the target group.

As a digital Online Educational Resource, the EU·DO·IT Language Learning platform, the MElang-E serious game and the EU·DO·IT and MElang-E Teaching Materials are available on www.eudoit.eu.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 177996 Eur

Project Coordinator

JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE-UNIVERSITATFRANKFURT AM MAIN & Country: DE

Project Partners

• FREIE UNIVERSITAET BERLIN
• UNIVERSITAT RAMON LLULL FUNDACIO
• Lycée Michel Lucius
• TALLINN UNIVERSITY
• ISTANBUL UNIVERSITESI – CERRAHPASA