Ordinary gamification is about creating a protected space of controlled real-life immersion for safe, yet challenging practice and learning. It provides a kind of Vygotskian Zone of Proximal Development enabling learners to cooperate to move beyond and further develop and consolidate their currently available behavioral, cognitive and emotional competences and skills. The concept is inspired by how young children play and interact with the world around them, for instance, when imitating a phone call, playing house, or imagining driving a car. Ordinary gamification concerns creatively reducing, simplifying or transforming complex real-life activities for the purpose of autonomous world appropriation and emergent learning. Being grounded in real-life through mimicry and controlled immersion, ordinary gamification significantly contributes to the authentication of learning. Against this conceptual backdrop, I will describe and discuss the ordinary gamification potential of the TeCoLa Virtual World developed and pedagogically evaluated in the Erasmus+ project TeCoLa (www.tecola.eu) over the past three years. Key gamification features include in particular 3D virtual world environments such as the English town of Chatterdale, editable learning station boards for displaying multimedia content, and customizable avatars by which students can enter the virtual world, move around, communicate with each other in the spoken or written mode, and meet up to collaborate at one of the learning stations. The ordinary gamification focus is on creating opportunities for intercultural communicative exchanges between school students of different linguacultural backgrounds from across Europe. The students are from secondary, vocational and primary schools, and they meet in pairs or small groups at learning stations to discuss the issues presented on the boards. Various conditions are used to minimize the all-too-present school character of the communicative interactions by strengthening their immersive real-life quality. Most importantly, this includes using the students’ common target language as a pedagogical lingua franca, accessing the TeCoLa Virtual World from home, a preference for low-preparation topics (e.g. “Breakfast”, “Fashion”, or “Waste disposal”), an emphasis on communicative interaction over task completion, and the integration of measures of self-reflection and pedagogical mediation. Case study observations and feedback from students and teachers will be presented to demonstrate the pedagogical value of an ordinary gamification approach for boosting intercultural foreign language communication practice and learning. Special attention will be given to issues of immersive authentication and speaker-learner emancipation.

1. Virtual intercultural communication practice and learning
An ordinary gamification perspective
Kurt Kohn, University of Tübingen, Germany
kurt.kohn@uni-tuebingen.de
www.tecola.eu > Teacher Resources
International Conference on Intercultural Learning in the Digital Age:
Building up Telecollaborative Networks
7-9 November 2019, Universitat de València, Spain
The research this talk is based on was supported by the European Erasmus+ project TeCoLa
(grant agreement: 2016-1-NL01-KA201-022997). The presentation reflects the views of the
author, and the European Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may
be made of the information contained therein.

2. The concept „game“ – a slippery customer
Membership
in the category
“game”
Our Aristotelian intuition:
> necessary and sufficient conditions
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical
Investigations:
“Consider for example the proceedings that we call ‘games’.
I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic
games, and so on. What is common to them all?”
> Family resemblances

3. Games in a pedagogical context
A change in
perspective & purpose
Gamifying LEARNING activities
Gamifying REAL-WORLD activities
fun, motivation
making world accessible,
taking part

4. Children gamify
real-world activities

5. Children gamify
real-world activities

6. Children gamify
real-world activities

7. Children gamify
real-world activities
Children gamify
real-world activities

8. When children
gamify
real-world activities
they . . .
create

9. Perception of reality
Perceiving the external world
by creating your internal
version of it
Reality as a projected world
[e.g. Ray Jackendoff, 1983]

10. When children
gamify
real-world activities
they . . .
create
immerse
themselves
take
ownership
are
in charge
engage
in authentic communication

11. Gamifying real-world activities
Pedagogical potential
● Simplification of complex real-world activities still out of reach
● Creation of a protected space of controlled real-world immersion for safe
practice and learning - a Vygotskian Zone of Proximal Development
● Monitoring guided by one’s own requirements of satisfaction and success
Authentic agency - Ownership - Emancipation

12. Students meet as avatars in international teams
in TeCoLa Virtual World scenarios to collaborate
on a given task
Students
⮚ follow the instructions on the boards
⮚ discuss the issues addressed
⮚ collaborate to solve a problem
Learning station boards display
multimedia task content:
⮚ text passages and pictures
⮚ links to video clips and web pages
⮚ questions and instructions
Teachers can edit
the content on
learning station
boards
Gamifying real-world communication
in the TeCoLa Virtual World

13. Working in pairs and from home, the students
➔ watch a video
➔ discuss and decide which statements were made
in the video
➔ exchange personal experiences and opinions
➔ browse and collect ideas for how to avoid waste
A learning path in the TeCoLa Virtual World
Dutch and German
secondary school students
Level: B2 / age 16-18
Learning objective:
to practise & improve
oral communication
Topic:
Waste & waste
avoidance
Example: Discussing
waste issues in the
TeCoLa Virtual World

14. What kind of English?
Language acquisition = socially mediated individual construction
● In my mind, heart and behavior -> MY English
● Shaped by who I am and where I come from
● Guided by who I want to be, i.e.
by my own requirements of communicative & communal success
Pedagogical implications
● Standard Native Speaker English – but with an open social constructivist orientation
● Pedagogical space for developing one’s own signature (> MY English)
● Attention to speaker-learners’ own requirements of success
● Attention to attitudinal skills such as tolerance for ambiguity, empathy, flexibility of behavior
[Byram 1997] for both in intercultural AND everyday communicative
● Attention to monitoring for successful communication
➔ A pedagogical lingua franca approach
● Speaker-learners use their common target language as a pedagogical LF
● Guided by their agreed requirements of success and their desire for satisfaction

15. Insights from our case studies
Speaker-learner
agency
Monitoring for
communicative & communal
success
➔ A need for pedagogical mediation
[Kohn & Hoffstaedter 2017, Hoffstaedter & Kohn 2019, Kohn 2020]
comprehension production
partner orientation
cooperative topic dev’t
and problem solving
empathy and
rapport
communicative
participation
speaker-learner
satisfaction
wait & see school effectnon-native speaker
emancipation

16. A few references
Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence. Multilingual Matters.
Hoffstaedter, P. & Kohn, K. (2019). Monitoring for successful communication in pedagogical lingua franca
exchanges in the TeCoLa Virtual World. TeCoLa Case Study Report. [www.tecola.eu]
Jackendoff, R. (1983). Semantics and cognition. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Kohn, K. (2019/20). A pedagogical lingua franca approach: Emancipating the foreign language learner.
Plenary talk delivered at the Asia TEFL Conference, Bangkok, July 2019. LEARN Journal, spring 2020.
Kohn, K. (2018a). MY English: a social constructivist perspective on ELF. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca,
7/1: 1-24.
Kohn, K. (2018b). Towards the reconciliation of ELF and EFL: Theoretical issues and pedagogical challenges.
In N. Sifakis & N. Tsantila (eds.), English as a Lingua Franca for EFL Contexts (pp. 32-48). Multilingual
Matters.
Kohn, K. & Hoffstaedter, P. (2015). Flipping intercultural communication practice: opportunities and
challenges for the foreign language classroom. In J. Colpaert, A. Aerts, M. Oberhofer & M. Gutiérez-Colón
Plana (eds.), Task design & CALL. Proceedings of CALL 2015 (pp. 338-354). Universiteit Antwerpen.
Kohn, K. & Hoffstaedter, P. (2017). Learner agency and non-native speaker identity in pedagogical lingua
franca conversations: insights from intercultural telecollaboration in foreign language education, Computer
Assisted Language Learning, 30/5: 351-367.
Wittgenstein, L. (1953) Philosophical investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.

17. TeCoLa
Teacher Resources
www.tecola.eu