Action Research On Using Games In Vocabulary Teaching At A Junior High School

Vocabulary is an indispensable part of English teaching and an important basis for learning the language.Since the reform of new curriculum,the vocabulary quantity in English textbooks has increased,and the requirements for students' vocabulary learning have been higher.However,due to the single teaching form in English classroom,vocabulary learning has become a boring and arduous task for students.Students have low interest in vocabulary learning,so that teachers are difficult to achieve the desired teaching aims.Therefore,it is important to improve students' interest in vocabulary learning.In the new curriculum standards formulated in 2011,the Ministry of Education also pointed out: “...Maintaining a positive learning attitude is the key to successful English learning.Teachers should continue arousing students' interest in learning and guide them to gradually turn interest into stable learning motivation.” The game teaching approach is to combine the teaching content with the game,so that the students can learn the target knowledge by playing the game,thereby improving the students' interest in learning.In this research,the game teaching approach is applied to the English vocabulary teaching in junior high school in the way of action research.Two rounds of action research were conducted in a Seventh Grade class.This research mainly explores two questions:(1)Can game teaching approach make students more interested in learning vocabulary?(2)What problems will teachers get when teaching vocabulary with the game teaching approach? How to solve them?In this research,the author collected data from questionnaires and teaching journal.The author explored students' interest in vocabulary learning through the comparative analysis of the two questionnaires before and after the study;and discovered the problems of new teachers in teaching by analyzing the situation of classroom observations,and finding ways to solve the problems by reflecting in the teaching journal.After analyzing the data in the action research,the author had the following findings:(1)The use of game teaching approach for vocabulary teaching can improve students' interest in English learning and vocabulary learning to a certain extent,and enable students to be more active in the classroom.(2)The teachers may have problems in the perspective of game design and classroom practice when using the game teaching approach for vocabulary teaching.Therefore,the teachers should be well prepared when designing games before class and learn to control the class better.This research broadens the ideas of vocabulary teaching for teachers,provides a reference for teachers to use the game teaching approach to teach vocabulary,and provides suggestions and inspiration for inexperienced teachers.At the same time,the thesis also has some limitations and shortcomings,such as the time of action research was short and the research participants were limited in only one class,and further improvements should be proposed in future research.