Inclusive digital games in the transcultural communicative classroom

Incorporating inclusive games and game-related tasks enables learners to explore issues of gender and sexuality in the EFL classroom, while simultaneously developing competences relevant specifically to language learning. Carefully selected and didactically prepared games and gaming activities that highlight marginalised genders and sexualities can facilitate reflection of learners' own identities. In including these games, teachers contribute to a better understanding of alternative identities and cultures that are created and shaped in online and offline worlds, and where transcultural communicative competence is required to navigate these settings. This article, relying on insights drawn from analytical play, discusses how gameplaying that thematically centres queer personae can foster identity development as an essential aspect of transcultural communicative competence. It also highlights ways in which teachers can utilize games in the EFL classroom to facilitate the inclusion of language learners who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, inter- or asexual (LGBTQIA*).