Abstract:

This paper arises from work in 2011 - 2013 in the HEUROPA! project, funded by the European Commission under the Lifelong Learning Programme. It outlines conclusions related to the use of digital games for learning, as they affect education, decision and policy-makers in school and adult education, presents the underlying evidence behind them and makes a series of recommendations arising from the conclusions and evidence. The HEUROPA! project was aimed at Czech, Polish and Lithuanian parents and teachers of bilingual children living in the surrounding cultures of Germany, France and Great Britain. In the HEUROPA! project partners meetings and a series of sector-specific workshops took place bringing together key project coordinators to share and discuss the state of the art in games for learning (also called Games-Based Learning – GBL) and to formulate recommendations for future project actions. The collated conclusions and recommendations were further presented and discussed at the meetings. Heuropa was designed to make the learning of the language an entertaining and rewarding experience, allowing children of different age groups, young people as well as their parents to participate in the language activities of their own accord. This is an important precondition for early and successful language learning. Thus the project outcomes focus on: games based rewards and motivation, numerous pictures representing multiple characters, packed with exciting details, and short stories that stimulate the imagination and speaking, a great amount of language games input – with a focus on reading and listening materials for the younger learners, and on reading for the older ones. The project outcomes offer a wide range of possibilities in discovering phonetics, word formation, word order, sentences formation rules and language structures. The project was aimed to make the materials available for regular teaching (in Saturday schools). Thus Heuropa! offers worksheets that deal with the familiar everyday situations and figures used in the games.

Following an introduction on bilingualism and factors that influence its development, this paper aims at providing conclusions from work in HEUROPA! and, more generally, games used in language learning, most of which apply to the three age group categories represented in HEUROPA! in turn. So the findings, of the results are presented as follows:
1) Research:
a) It’s not clear what is meant by games for learning;
b) education systems remain too rigid;
c) The evidence base of the effectiveness of games is growing;
d) Educational resources are more valued when localised and in home languages;
e) Practitioners, developers, industry and research have differing perspectives;
2. Game development:
a) Games are not yet so popular tool in education;
b) There is considerable resistance among teachers;
c) Adult digital literacy problems;
3. Teachers and learners:
a) Yong children as well as people of all ages are enthusiastic about playing games within informal settings (Roger Blamire, European Schoolnet, 2010).

Keywords:

Game based learning, bilingual children.