From 25 October to 1 November 2026, Gulnara Rizakhodzhayeva, lead researcher of project AP22787128 at the International University of Tourism and Hospitality, visited Istanbul and Marmaris, Türkiye, on a research trip. The project explores how gamification and art therapy in foreign language education can help tourism professionals communicate more creatively.
At İstanbul Topkapı University, Rizakhodzhayeva met with academic colleagues to exchange teaching and research experience. They discussed how game-based tasks, creative exercises, and elements of art therapy can help tourism students communicate in professional settings in a foreign language. Examples included role-playing interactions with tourists and presenting tour itineraries in a foreign language.
At the VII International Congress of Youth Researches in Marmaris, Rizakhodzhayeva delivered three presentations. She discussed how gamified language learning relates to young people’s interactions in tourism, how game-based and creative activities affect young learners, and how immersive technologies can support language learning. She also shared insights from Kazakhstan during an international panel on artificial intelligence, social media, and young people’s lives in the digital age.
The materials collected during the trip will inform the project’s role-play scenarios, game-based tasks, and creative exercises for tourism students, as well as future research publications and teaching guideli
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