MULTILINGUAL GAMES IN LANGUAGE EDUCATION: AN INTERACTIVE GAME “THE BATTLE OF POLYGLOTS”

Multilingual games are treated in the paper as a new type of educational games which are gaining more popularity as a result of a growing tendency towards studying several languages simultaneously. This tendency prevails in all spheres of education with all age groups of students. Considering the fact that multilingual games are a relatively new teaching instrument, it is difficult to observe them from any obvious theoretical grounds. There is no explicit definition or typology of such games to say nothing of their role in teaching foreign languages. The goal of this paper is to offer first basic principles of using multilingual games in a classroom: their working definition is introduced, the goals and functions as well as the methodology of their application into the teaching process are outlined. A new multilingual game “The Battle of Polyglots” developed by the authors of this paper is further presented. It was tested in a secondary school for bilingual Russian-Tatar speaking children who also study English and German. It is possible to conclude that such games aim first and foremost at molding a metalanguage competence which leads to the formation of a multilingual communicative competence. They are: switching between languages, doing some communicative tasks with languages which are not known to the students, comparing languages, self-education, communication in a new cultural setting, etc. Most general characteristics of multilingual games comprise the use of at least three but no more than five languages simultaneously including mother-tongues of the players, the focus on students' cognitive development, interdisciplinarity, interactivity, multifunctioning, universality of implementation. However, such games can lead to a lot of mental stress, they require focused attention and the ability for a positive transfer from one language into another, as well as language flair. As a result, they can be introduced not earlier than with ten year old students and onwards. The best time to introduce multilingual games is after the students get acquainted with the second foreign language.