A Study Of Using Games In Primary School English Teaching

At present, the following phenomena exit generally in primary school English teaching. Firstly, the pedagogical education has not carried on the specialized division of teaching to the primary school English. It's extremely common to treat primary school students as middle-school students. Secondly, because the social competition is fierce, the parents expect their children to be the best, the students' burden of study is heavy, their pressure is increasing gradually, and the students are tired of learning. Therefore, it is necessary to find a suitable approach to teach young second language learners. According to the features of teaching foreign language for children, this study put forward that games are effective teaching aids in children's English teaching and they can promote successful language learning.The relationship between games and teaching can be dated back to old Greece when western education, especially children's education in western countries has been full of the exposition of the relationship between games and teaching. Many educators paid much attention to game teaching, such as Rousseau, Froebel, Montessori, Dewey and Chen Heqin. Games are the nature of the children.The major instrument used in the paper was class observation and questionnaire. The subjects were 45 students of Grade 4 from Dikuang Primary School of Gansu Province. The study lasted for more than four months, from March to July, 2006.At the beginning of the study, a questionnaire was made. After this, the experiments were carried out. During the first two months, the subjects were taught without games in class; but in the last two months, the subjects' English class was full of games. During this period, the subjects' affect, preferences were all observed continually. In the last two weeks, data was collected to testify the effect by game-teaching and non-game teaching. The subjects were taught by the same teacher. Both class observation and results of the experiment indicate that games are effective teaching aids in children's English teaching and they can promote successful language learning, thus support the hypothesis of the research.The thesis consists of six parts. Chapter One is Introduction. This part introduces the current situation of the English teaching and the problems that we faced. Chapter Two is Literature Review. The thesis explores the history of game teaching; the game has a profound teaching theoretical and practical basis. Chapter Three is Rationale of the research. Chapter Four is Research Design. It treats such issues as the research hypothesis, research procedures, research subjects and instruments. Chapter Five is Findings and Discussions. It begins with the findings of the class observation and experiment, followed by the explanative discussion. Chapter Six is Implications. It discusses some points to be guided against when game teaching is to be used in English classroom in primary school. We have come to the conclusion that game contribute considerably to successful English language learning, especially to children's language learning, but the organization and application of game teaching is a complicated process which should be treated with great care and consideration.