How to Use Games in English Teaching
As English becomes more and more accepted as an international language,interest in the English teaching to younger learners has been steadily growing in recent years. Accompanied with the carrying out of the new English Curriculum Standard by the Ministry of Education of Chinese government, there are a lot of new problems arising from the field of English teaching in the primary schools. This thesis holds the hypothesis that game-teaching approach should be adopted in children’s English teaching, and also probes into the reliability and pros and cons of using games in the teaching process.
Games are a different kind of play activity. They are highly structured and include specific rules to be followed (Spodek Bernard and Saracho Olivia, 1994, p.132). Specially, teaching game is one of the kinds of the games. Byrne (1995) gave the definition to games as a form of play governed by rules. He suggested:“Games should be enjoyed and fun. They are not just a diversion, a break from routine activities, but a way of getting the learner to use the language in the course of the game.”(Byrne, 1995, p. 32).
From the above, we can safely drawn a conclusion that “game” in language teaching (teaching game) can be defined as an organized activity that usually has the following properties: A. a particular task or objective; B. a set of rules; C. competition between players; D. communication between players by spoken or written language.
There is a widely-held lay belief that younger second language learners generally do better than older learners. Children exercise a good deal of both cognitive and affective effort in order to internalize both native and second languages. Moreover, one of most essential thing that teachers teaching children’s English should make all means to motivate their spirit and sustain their interest in learning English. Therefore, most of those teachers chose the method by using games in the teaching process,
because games using is closely related to characteristics of children for their age and their features of psychology. However, just as we know, language learning is not easy work. In a word, games can help and encourage many learners to sustain their interest and they play an important role in language teaching:
It has been found that one appropriate strategy to encourage language acquisition is using language games. Children have a greater need to be motivated by the teacher or the material, and they are easier to be motivated.Many scholars agree that games in the language classroom have been considered a better way to arouse the interest of children, John Dewey claimed games were integral to schooling since they provided active and position learning experience. Games are also listed in the language skills for the learning stage of primary school in the New English Curriculum Standard. When using games in the classroom, it is beneficial for teachers to have a complete understanding of the definitions of games: a form of play concerning rules, competition, and an element of fun. Teachers should also consider the advantages of games: the ability to capture students’ attention; lower students’ stress; and give students the chance for real communication. (Campell Linda, Campell Bruce and Dickson dee, 1999).
For adults and children, difference between the age group in learning styles, abilities and motivation entail corresponding differences in selection of materials and methodology and in lesson plan. Children have a greater immediate need to be motivated by the teacher or the material in order to learn effectively. Teacher can raise children’s motivation and enthusiasm by selecting interesting activities. They are always curious about the interesting things. Games are one excellent means to maintain the curiosity in the English course. When the teachers ask the children to play games, they are prepared to enjoy. All this mean that it is easy to maintain a high degree of motivation and to make the English class into an enjoyable and stimulating experience for the children.
To successfully teach children English requires specific skills and intuitions that differ from those that a teacher would use for adult teaching. Brown (1994) suggested
five categories help the teacher to give some practical approaches to teaching children as follows:
The first one is intellectual development. Since children (up to the age of about eleven) are still in an intellectual stage of what Piaget called “concrete operations,” we should remember their limitations. Rules, explanations, and other even slightly abstract talk about language must be approached with extreme caution. Play (game) is a way of manipulating the outside world so that it serves a vital function in the child’s developing intellect and remains.
The second one is attention span. One of the most salient differences between adults and children is attention span. Children have short attention spans. The short attention spans come up only when the teachers present stuff that to them is boring, useless, or too difficult. Since language lessons can at times be difficult for children, the teachers should try to make them interesting, lively, and fun.
The third one is sensory input. Children need to have all five sense stimulated. The activities should strive to go well beyond the visual and auditory modes that we usually feel are sufficient for a classroom. As it is mentioned above, games use both visual and aural channels to activate the language production.
The fourth one is affective factors. Children are often innovative in language forms but still have a great many inhibitions. They are extremely sensitive, especially to peers: What do others think of me? What will so-and-so think when I speak in English? Children are in many ways much more fragile than adults. Their egos are still being shaped, and therefore the slightest nuances of communication can be negatively interpreted. Teachers need to help them to overcome such potential barriers to learning.
And the last one is authentic, meaningful language. Children are focus on what the new language can actually be used for right here and now. They are less willing to put up with language that does not hold immediate rewards for them. The need for meaningfulness in language learning has been accepted for some years. If the children are amused, angered, challenged, intrigued or surprised, the content is clearly meaningful to them., therefore the meaning of the language they listen to, read, speak
and write will be more vividly experienced and better remembered. Games in language can meet the needsfor “meaningfulness”.
Organization
Games in language teaching can be divided into different categories. There are five types of language teaching games, consisting role-play, musical activity, intelligence games, sports games and drama performing, which met the need to develop students’ multi-intelligence.
In games for language learning, the authors (Wright Andrew, Betteridge David and Buchby Michael, 1984) grouped the games according to their general and spirit (different functions as: picture games, psychology games, word games, true or false games, memory games, question and answer games, story games, guessing and speculating games and miscellaneous, which is easy for the teachers to handle.)
Games can be found to give practice in all the skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking), in all the stages of the teaching/learning sequences (presentation, repetition, recombination and free use of language) and for many types of communication (e.g. encouraging, criticizing, agreeing, explaining). Several characteristic of teaching games must be considered: First, a game is a closed activity. Games must have a beginning and an end. It must be easy for the players, or the teacher, to know who is about to reach the aim. Second, a game needs less supervision from the teacher. This must be understood as linguistic supervision. Sometimes the game is conducted by the teacher who acts as judge, scorer and/or referee. Third, it is easier for students to keep going. Compared with pair or group work, a game has a lucid element that other interaction patterns do not have. This makes the activity more attractive.
There are four types of games as cooperative games, competitive games, communication games and code-control games, which has been greatly adopted and will be stressed as following:
The first one is Cooperative Games. In this type of game, the main action is centered in trying to reach the aim in cooperation. Players or teams work together towards the common goal (Jill Hadfield, 1984). This type of game is excellent to
