Conference Program

Socio-educational inequalities restrict access to cognitive and social experiences, placing students from disadvantaged backgrounds at a disadvantage. In the field of foreign languages, authenticity plays a fundamental role as a space for developing semantic and grammatical skills, contributing to greater cultural integration (Chiappelli, Leoncini, 2025). For those with a low socio-economic status, the school environment becomes crucial as it represents the only accessible space for linguistic diversity and plurality. Furthermore, the use of innovative approaches such as immersive experiences can serve as a bridge to enhance the multilingual repertoire through authentic engagement, strengthening learners’ linguistic and cultural identity, with a view to treating multicultural classes as a resource rather than an obstacle (Ritterfeld, Lüke, 2020). Through the use of immersive technologies such as virtual reality, it is possible to access a variety of safe and often realistic environments in which the learner can learn and overcome the geographical and financial barriers that limit real-world mobility (Berrezueta-Guzman, Daya, 2025). Sociological and language teaching literature agrees that a student’s linguistic repertoire is profoundly influenced by the family environment (Cook, 2012; Pavlenko 2007). Students from families with high cultural capital are often exposed to a variety of linguistic stimuli that facilitate the acquisition of new languages. Conversely, students from disadvantaged backgrounds may perceive the foreign language as a foreign and inaccessible system. Intercomprehension addresses precisely this issue, overturning the hierarchy of knowledge: it does not require students to erase their linguistic identity in order to adopt a new one, but invites them to explore their own roots (including dialects) to decode related languages (Garbarino, Leone, 2022). The Time to S.P.R.I.C. project – Shared Pathways for Romance languages, Intercomprehension and Cycling in virtual reality – stems from the need to create a synergy between theoretical foundations and a concrete educational product that can be used within the school system. At the hub of the project is an immersive, multilingual serious game set in the Susa Valley, where, at each stage, a linguistic input is presented in a different Romance language (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan or Romanian), accompanied by personalised and adaptive feedback (Camandona, Corino, 2025). This approach promotes metalinguistic awareness and respects individual learning paces, ensuring that no student is left behind due to prior gaps in knowledge, thereby enabling a vision of language education that places equity and democracy at its core. These technologies are not merely ‘add-ons’ to traditional teaching, but tools that allow us to rethink access to knowledge.