Digital games and the development of plurilingual competence: Language models, language awareness and transformational play

Abstract

The potential of games to support language learning and acquisition – be it in the digital wilds or in the foreign language classroom – has often been discussed. In this article, I will look at digital games from an explicitly plurilingual perspective. I describe five existing games that demonstrate a plurilingual outlook (Romanica, MElang-E, BabelAR, LoCALL, World of Languages), focusing on their potential regarding modelling plurilingual competencies, fostering language awareness, and encouraging transformational play. I finish with a discussion of overall trends that can be observed across the five games and ramifications regarding pedagogy and future research.