The Application of Game to English Teaching in Downtown Primary School

Due to the development of modern science and technology, the nation’s economy has developed at a relatively fast speed over the last decades. Thus, people have more and more opportunities to go abroad and sharing their opinions with others from any country. English, as an indispensable vehicle to be used in communication, becomes much more useful than ever on account of the modern demand of society. For the majority of English learners in China, how to learn English better in a relatively short time is one of the issues they most concerned about. So as English teachers, trying to pick up an effective method and applying it to their teaching is rather necessary and important.

Nowadays, the GTM (Game Teaching Method) has been accepted by most teachers and students. However, the study on GTM (Game Teaching Method) is still shallow. Overall speaking, some English teachers, especially the front line teachers cannot apply this method appropriately when they teach English in class. At the same time, there are still many barriers that prevent the GTM (Game Teaching Method) to be used in English class, like lack of inspiration, high time expense with low efficiency, and so on. What’s worse, most of the English teachers are not able to use the GTM (Game Teaching Method) neatly.

Playing games in class can be called the using of GTM (Game Teaching Method). Although quantities advantages of GTM (Game Teaching Method) couldn’t be ignored, the research in this paper also finds out that the English teaching in current situation couldn’t perfectly adjust to the using of the GTM (Game Teaching Method) well. So according to the survey, the author puts forward some strategies of solving the demerits of GTM application in downtown primary school EFL(English as Foreign Language) class, with which teachers could apply the GTM (Game Teaching Method) better and students’ integrated language competence could be developed gradually.

For children, interest is a good teacher to learn a foreign language (Cameron 2001:2). However, not a few students in primary school are lack of the lasting interest to learn English. In some students’ daily life, they even scarcely use English out of the class. So it is urgent for teachers to make students feel pleased and cheerful when they are learning and using English. Besides, students are more likely to enjoy English learning in a relatively relaxed environment. As a result, GTM (Game Teaching Method) is obviously a perfect choice for teachers to apply to their teaching.

Many findings have been researched by Chinese scholars in the several past decades. For example, in the doctoral thesis named A Study on the Strategies of the Game Teaching in Elementary English, Ran Tu pointed out that game-teaching is the combination of games and teaching. It helps students acquire the knowledge happily and unknowingly (冉荼 2008:16). What’s more, Chen Heqin also did researches on the theory and practice of game-teaching. Chen deems that games have important significance in children’s learning. By playing games, children could learn more about the environment, know better about things around them, and make progress for themselves (陈鹤琴 1983:36). Besides, Feng Jilin held the view that the importance of using game in fact indicated the positive role it played in English teaching (冯季林 2008:25).

Despite some positive effect, it has been found that there are still a lot of problems existing in English classroom activity design such as lack of inspiration and high time expense with low efficiency. The author talks about the problems that can be summarized during the investigation, including the problems of the content, form and participation, etc. In the end of the study, the author emphasizes the importance of GTM (Game Teaching Method) and suggests that teachers still need to make great efforts to improve if they design activities/games during English teaching.

As is well-known, GTM (Game Teaching Method) has been applied in primary school for several decades. Why is this method so widely used in language teaching? Does this method have any demerits? Those are what the author wants to research in this chapter. By doing the relative research, the author tries to emphasize that applying games to teaching is not only necessary in primary school English teaching, but also crucial within the whole process of children’s development. In a word, playing games is one of the useful activities which are very popular with children of all grades in primary school. If English teachers could apply the method of playing games in the course of English teaching, children’s enthusiasm will be dramatically aroused. And the atmosphere of the classroom will be prominently stimulated so that the effectiveness of teaching will be greatly enhanced. In the mean time, children will develop themselves very well, both physically and physiologically (魯子问 2004:12)

As mentioned above, teachers have many a choice to select a type of games in their class.

However, in deciding which kind of game to be used in a particular class and which games will be most appropriate with the specific students, teachers must take many factors into account.

According to Rixon, teachers should firstly consider the level of the game to fit the language level of the students (Rixon 1981:56). The game teachers choose should match the objectives of the class or the content. Moreover, teachers should consider students’ own characteristics, such as whether they are bashfulness or outgoing, serious or vivacious, assiduous or lazy to learn. They should also think over when the game should be used because there is a big difference between using the game in the different times.

Additionally, it is necessary for teachers set an example sometimes to encourage students to participate in the activity, so that students’ interest could be aroused and they will learn the language points better. In other word, teachers should thoroughly comprehend the meaning and nature of the game. Only by doing so can teachers be a good “controller” in the game and they are able to deal with any unexpected matters during the games (陳抒婷 2007:3).

Admittedly, it is quite difficult to find a specific game that meets all the teaching requirements. So some games need to be adapted in order to fit most of the students’ language level and their own characteristics. Among all the possible factors, the most important one is that games should be used when they can give students both fun and educational meaning otherwise they will be a waste of time.

Choosing an appropriate type of games is just the first step towards successful teaching. What teachers ought to do next is try to design and organize games reasonably. Many a factors can be for reference as below.

To begin with, the content of the games should fit students’ current language level. For one thing, as beginners to learn English, some students will probably not learn English intensively. Teachers do have the responsibility to look for a suitable game that students are really interested in, thus, students can totally put themselves into the game and gradually improve their competence of using language during the process (胡叔异 1992:10). Besides, according to the theory of “I+1”, activities are supposed to be added in some knowledge points, which is a little bit higher than students’ current language level. By doing so, students will not only have the specific goals to reach, but also have an incentive to complete the activities all the way.

What is more, for teachers, the dimension of class should also be taken into account first. It is obviously that a large class with more than 30 students is quite common in Chinese primary school. But what is known to all is that, the more students in a class, the more difficult for teachers to control the situation and set up activities. In order to ensure each student has the opportunity to take part in the activity, teachers need to design and organize the activity based on the size of each class. For instance, if a class has too many students, what teachers could do is to divide students into several groups. What is more, teachers could select a team leader in each group, so that the group leaders are able to ensure each member of the groups could take part in the activities. Besides, the group leaders could guide his/her team members to accomplish the goal of the activities together, such as doing the presentation to the rest of the class if necessary.

Last but not the least, teachers should be well-prepared for the coming activities, including having a solid foundation of background knowledge and knowing students’ own personalities and cognitive features. Then the teachers can arrange and make the activities become effective and attractive. Students may also become more interested in learning English and in return, their affection and scores also activate teachers to improve themselves.

References：

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[2]Rixon, S.. How to use games in language teaching[M]. London: Macmillan,1981.

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【作者简介】朱慧娟，合肥市第四十五中学芙蓉分校。