A Study Of Gender Differences In Game Teaching In Primary English Class

Games are extremely important for children as games are an important way of children’s lives.By using Game Teaching Method.teachers can present boring language points in an interesting way so as to fully mobilize children’s various senses by watching,listening,playing,acting,speaking,singing and all kinds of other methods.Game Teaching Method emphasizes the importance of children’s teaching experience.It greatly stimulates children’s interests in English learning.It can also foster children’s cooperation ability and social communication ability and train children’s thinking ability,which are extremely important to children’s development.With all these benefits,Game Teaching Method is frequently used in Primary English Class.Numerous experts and scholars have verified the importance and effectiveness of Game Teaching Method.However,few scholars have studied the gender differences in Game Teaching in Primary English Class.Boys and girls have significant differences in terms of inborn physiology,acquired psychology and personality traits.Thus,they may behave differently while teaching method is the same.Therefore,this paper studies gender differences in Game Teaching in Primary English Class,in order to find the differences between boys and girls in Game Teaching and propose some effective suggestions to optimize Game Teaching strategies.The methodologies which are used in the paper are classroom observation,questionnaires and personal interview.By carefully observing and recording eight teacher’s sixteen regular English classes and eight open English classes in Wuhan Optics Valley No.5 Primary School,this thesis tries to find out the variety of English games used in English class,students’ participation and violating disciplines.In order to study some aspects of gender differences in Game Teaching which cannot be observed in the classroom,the author designed a questionnaire which involves motivation for games,self-evaluation during games,and attribution of success and failure in games.Students respectively from Grade 3 to Grade 6 have done the questionnaire.After that,the author interviewed eight teachers and eight students,in order to explore the reasons of gender differences in Games Teaching.After careful analysis,the author comes to the conclusion that boys and girls are both very interested in English games and the degree of their interests is almost the same.But their interests decline as they go to a higher grade.In general,the degree of boys’ participation in game teaching is higher than that of girls’.Boys prefer fast-response games,intelligent games and performance games as well.Girls prefer music games,performance games and situational games.In addition,girls prefer group games,but boys prefer individual games.Girls’ internal motivation in game teaching is greater than boys’.Girls pay more attention to the improvement of their own ability by participating in games.Boys pay more attention to the sense of achievement by winning the games.Boys’ self-evaluation in game teaching is higher than that of girls.Boys tend to attribute the success of games to their bold personality,more chances to participate in games,and the simplicity of games.They attribute the failure of games to not working hard enough.However,girls tend to attribute the success of games to their own ability and their own efforts and attribute the failure of games to their poor English.In the process of games,boys violates disciplines more frequently and their kinds of violation are much more than the girls’.At last,according to the findings,some specific suggestions to optimize game teaching strategies are provided,aiming to help Primary English teachers improve the effects of game teaching and promote the maximum effects of game teaching.