Teaching English by using games

Using Games in English Teaching / Teaching english through useing games

Introduction:

        English, as a second language in ffice:smarttags" />ffice:smarttags" />China, is a major subject from primary schools to university. It’s an essential stage for children in primary schools to acquire pronunciation and memorize basic vocabularies. Many young learners know nothing about English when they begin to learn it in schools, English learning takes them to a broader world and this will mean special to the children both in ways and in mind. They are interested in the “strange” thing, but they also feel a little fear about it. This ambivalent feeling may be easy settled if the teacher has various teaching methods. The priority for English teachers is to arouse children’s interest in studying English, for an interest in a language is known as a key to being motivated to learn. But how?

Young children’s attention can be easy taken, but the attention spans vary, so it is difficult to keep it throughout the whole class. Then the teacher should have the ability and enthusiasm to design different activities that children enjoy to attract their attention. Through lots of research investigations and my own experience in teaching practice, I propose an approach to language teaching. That is, to use games in English teaching classroom. Modern pedagogy takes games as one of the important teaching means which can pass on knowledge, develop skills and ability in languages teaching, games have been paid more and more attention to. In this thesis, I want to discuss this good way to arouse children’s interest in English learning--- competitive activities or known as games, the activities can make people keep balance in heart and health. fficeffice" />

Ⅰ. The theoretical background in using games in English teaching

1.1  Psychological background

According to psychology research, young children, say up to the age of seven, find it difficult or impossible to see language as an abstract system, independent of communication or enjoyable sound sequences such as songs and rhymes. They find it difficult or impossible to think in terms of learning goals, although they respond to more immediate objectives such as drawing a picture or making a kite. They also find it difficult or impossible to work at one task for a long time. Their attention span is usually short, and they need frequent changes of activity. A survey (Zhao Chengfu, 2002:202) shows that in a well organized atmosphere, children’s attention last for different time: around age 5 to 7, they can pay attention for 10 to 15 minutes; age between 7 and 10 can pay attention for about 20 minutes; age between 10 and 12 last for about 25 minutes; and the time of attention of those older than 12 may reach to 30 minutes.

A famous psychologist Piaget (1967) protested that movement produces “thought”. Movement is the beginning of learning. Cognitive frame is built up step by step whose joint is the movement but not the consciousness. Moreover, some psychologists claim that children should learn through play. Play is an activity performed for its own sake, highly motivated, often involving fantasy and characterized by intense involvement and concentration. In play, children explore and learn about their world. Play is sometimes called the child’s work because it is such a significant mode of learning. The essence of play is that it grows from within the child or group of children who engage in it. It is a creative expression of their thoughts and dealings, based in their own life experiences. Play is the most important mode children have for clarifying and integrating all their experiences, both in and out of school.

What’s more, children are most moldable in primary schools, during which time they are active and good at imitating but cannot concentrate their attention for long period. Thus, teachers, in view of young learners’ psychological and physiological features, should try to regulate their affection, arouse their interest, and intensify their motivation, fostering not only their linguistic competence but also social and cultural awareness. Besides, fun-based, activity-oriented and student-centered approach should be adopted so as to ensure that children learn foreign languages in a relaxed atmosphere.

1.2  Linguistic background

Stephen Krashen’s input hypothesis and affective filter hypothesis claim that the process of second language acquisition is influenced by affective factors either positively or negatively. The input hypothesis claims, “We acquire by understanding language that contains structure a bit beyond our current level of competence (i.e. “i+1”).” S.Krashen (1982:21) writes:

… a necessary (but not sufficient ) condition to move from stage ‘i’ to stage ‘i+1’ is that the acquired understand input that contains ‘i+1’, where ‘understand’ means that the acquirer is focused on the meaning and not he form of the message.

Thus, acquisition takes place when the learner understands language containing ‘i+1’. Moreover, the affective filter hypothesis claims, “The effect of affect is ‘outside’ the language acquisition device proper.” “It implies that our pedagogical goals should not only include supplying comprehensive input but also creating a situation that encourages a low filter. The effective teacher is one who can provider input and help make it comprehensible in a low anxiety situation.” Krashen concludes that comprehensible input and the strength of the filter are the true causes of second language acquisition. That is to say, before the acquisition competence, no one can avoid the affective factors’ influence. The affective factors include motivation, attitude, ego, and anxiety. Here, I would like to focus a great deal attention on motivation, which I think is the most essential factor.

Motivation is a basic ingredient of the child’s learning. Children are born with an intrinsic motivation to learn and to understand the world round them, an aspect of development which Robert Whit (1959) refers to as competence motivation. A child’s motivation for learning can increase or diminish over time, depending, in part, on other peoples’ reactions to her efforts. However, motivation is not only one of the most important components of learning but also one of the most difficult to measure. Psychologists define motivation as an internal process that activities, guides and maintains behavior over time. (Baron, 1992; Schunk, 1990) In plain language, motivation is what gets you going, keeps you going, and determines where you’re trying to go. An English teacher should try to use external stimuli to facilitate students’ inner motivation transformed into their inner desire. If a student has positive attitude towards English, he will has a strong motivation to grasp this language, and this will help him to be markedly successful.

Ⅱ. The exploration of using games in English class

Through the theories above we can easily know that children are active in playing games. Playing games is their nature. American psychologist and educational reformer John Dewey holds the notion that teaching material must be highly coherent with psychology. If the teaching material accords with children’s psychology, they would be attracted by the interesting activities and accordingly learn and master the teaching material on their own initiative. Classroom games just answer for children’s cognitive traits. At the games, the children get the pleasure and the satisfaction so that they are willing to learn English. Meanwhile, the using of games is helpful to create the relaxing atmosphere for language acquisition; it is effective in children’s English teaching.

As Sarah Phillips (1993:16) in Young Learners claims that if the activity is interesting, it is easier to be remembered, and so is the language. Meanwhile, the children gain the satisfaction which can arouse their motivation of learning. Therefore, to create a relaxed and enjoyable atmosphere for language teaching is helpful. There is a survey ( Tang Lei, 2004: 21) of 77 pupils about their attitude to the English teaching. 96.01% pupils respond that they like to play games in English class; 88.31% pupils think they can focus a great attention to the games; 93.51% pupils like the cooperative games. Moreover, the survey shows that competitive activities share more commends than the others.  

An advantage of using games in English classroom is that they add variation to a lesson and increase motivation by providing a plausible incentive to use the target language. For many children between four and twelve years old, especially the youngest, language learning will not be the key motivational factor. Games can provide this stimulus. The game context makes the foreign language immediately useful to the children. It brings the target language to life. Through playing games, students can learn English the way children learn their mother tongue without being aware they are studying; thus without stress, they can learn a lot. Even shy students can participate positively. (Lewis, 1999) Playing games in learning may develop the sense of communication in English of the students. And the combination of the games may help them with a strong communicative ability.

Game is not only the most effective means to arouse the students’ interest of learning; it also can make them all fully concentrate on what they are doing. Therefore, students will get deep impression of what they have learned and gain permanent memory of the content. Because of this, teachers can get the best effect of outcome. Teaching games are various. Teachers can use some new games every time. Then the students will be of an expected and new sense in class. And they will often be enthusiastic and never feel tires. While playing games, students can make a good use of their comprehension, their ability of analyses, judgment, imagination and logical deduction. At the same time, it requires that they have a quick mind, flexibility and creativity. Therefore, games can not only help students master the language points, but also be good for developing their intelligence and all kinds of skills.

Students greatly welcome games. They can create a cheerful and light-hearted environment and arouse students’ interest in learning English. Games are considered one of the most effective ways to improve efficiency in language learning. Games in class appear to be of considerable aid in involving the students in actively trying to utilize or challenge the concepts they are being taught. They are “sloppy” and hardly controlled. They are also a source for insight, for suggesting other types of experiments and for sweetening the intuition.

Games make complicated grammatical points come out in simple forms. So it is quite acceptable for students. Take my teaching practice for example, when talking about the relation between a noun and an adjective, I gave the students a noun such as “book”, let one of the groups to tell some adjectives which can modify the noun in turns. Meanwhile, if any student repeats or uses a wrong modifier, the whole group will fail. If this group can not continue giving a new word in three seconds, then, have another group do it. The group which is composed of four or eight student or even more that has got the most adjectives will be winners. After playing the game, the students know how many adjectives can modify the noun and what they are. Later, they get deep impression on the noun and the adjectives. This game not only helps students review the words, but also helps them memorize the new ones. And it stimulates the students’ enthusiasm as well.

Games are also collective activities, and then the relationship between teachers and students will become more harmonious while playing. Because most of the games are played in groups, when doing them they develop the collective spirit of the students. Now, to take certain games during teaching seems more and more important in order to arouse the students’ interest in learning for getting better results in teaching.

The great educator Confucius said, “Teaching students in accordance with their aptitude,” He believed that learning should be a process of exploring and understanding of one’s own gift, so it is very important for the students to learn English by themselves, game is a good way to achieve this goal.

The role of the teacher in playing game is to guide. I think that to guide well equals to learn well. As long as the students like the teacher’s new teaching method, they can take an active part in learning something. What is more, Confucius was also skillful in arousing the students’ interest and eagerness in learning. He thought that only by making students interested in what they were learning, only when they were eager to learn, could they learn the knowledge well.

Ⅲ. Some typical kinds of games in English teaching

The discussion above makes it evident that using games is a very effective means for teaching children English. In my teaching practice in primary schools in Shenzhen I collected many games which have been used very popular. I also tried to compose some in my teaching practice, from which I benefited a lot. Here I would like to share with other primary school teachers some of the games and their application in English class, hoping that we can make more efforts in exploring this teaching method.

3.1   Vocabulary and Phrase Games

(1)   Bingo

Level: Absolute beginner to lower intermediate
Aim: to review or preview letters, or vocabulary
Materials: item list, bingo cards (students can make these) 

Procedure: Draw a 9-square box (as in tic-tac-toe) and ask students to draw a picture with the target words in each box. You might draw each picture on the board in random order and have the students draw them in their grid. (This is very useful since you can review the words together with the whole class as you go along and help students with ideas of how to draw them). Then draw the pictures in your box on the board and ask the students to choose a word. Choose the students at random. When they get a bingo (any three in a row), they get a team point, a card or a reward. A variation may be to reward them only if they get a bingo before you. This makes it more challenging and covers more vocabulary.

In my teaching practice, I’ve used Bingo in reviewing vocabularies about animals. I found this game can not only practice the students’ listening but also their speaking. Students showed their great interest in it. What’s more, my students gave me some new ideas in designing games.

(2)     Hangman

Level: Absolute beginner to lower intermediate
Aim: to practice vocabulary
Materials: writing surface

Procedure: First, the teacher thinks of a word and writes the same number of dashes, as there are letters in the word on the board. Then, students begin to call out letters from the alphabet. When a student guesses a correct letter, he/she will put the letter in its proper place. The letter may be repeated. If a letter that is in the word has not been mentioned, the teacher will draw one stroke for the hangman. If they can guess the word before the picture of the hangman is finished, they will win. Otherwise they will lose.

Variation: This works best with phrases, not individual words. Scoring need not be a hanged man. It can be any picture, or word that has about 10 parts. The pictures can be drawn bit by bit or erased bit by bit.

For a long time, remembering vocabulary is a kind of boring work for some students. In my teaching practice, I found it is no longer a truth after playing the game ‘Hang man’. Unlike other games, Hang man set an atwitter atmosphere; it gives the students a kind of pressure to save the man. Meanwhile, the students are more willing and active to remember a word.

3.2    Games for Structures

Add A Word

Level: upper beginner to intermediate
Materials: Writing surface or blank word cards
Aim: to practice sentence building

Procedure: The teacher writes a short, simple sentence on the board. One by one, the students give the teacher one word and indicate where it fits into the sentence. It is then added and the next student takes a turn.

Variation: Students may be allowed to add two or three words.  Students may be allowed to replace a word with two words.  The board can become crowded. To avoid this, words can be written on cards and the sentence constructed from the word cards.

3.3   Games for Listening and Speaking

(1)Simon Says

Students should only obey the commands if you preface each one with Simon says. If you omit the preface Simon says any student who obeys the command can no longer participate in the game. The last student to remain in the game is the winner.        Children have just learnt some of the body words. In order to check whether children can understand them by listening, their teacher ask them to response what they hear with physical performances, that is, when the teacher says “Touch your nose”, the children give the response by touching his/her nose. In this way, the teacher may observe who can or cannot do it. If all of the children can follow, it gives the teacher a signal that he/she can move on his/her teaching. Otherwise, the teacher should do something to improve that.

Non-verbal Responses: This technique fits very well within the Total Physical Response methodology for early language development (Asher, 1988) At the early stages of English learning, children need to be assessed by using physical performance responses and visual tools before they can speak confidently. This type of response can reduce children’s anxiety normally linked to assessment and may help children see it as a daily learning activities.

In my teaching practice, I have used this game for several times. It is known that students are easier to be sleepy in the afternoon than that in the morning. Therefore, while the class in afternoon, I used Simon says as the warm-up game. This game helped my students get into the learning status easily.

(2). Hide and Find

Aim: to practice directions
Preparation: paper cups and something to blindfold half the students

Procedure: Number 12 paper cups on the bottom from 1 to 12, depending on the number of students. Divide the students into two teams. For larger classes, you could make three teams or more. Students on each team are paired. One student is blindfolded and the other student becomes the guide. Hide the cups all over the room but they should not be under anything. Assign team one cups 1-6 to find and team 2 cups 7-12. Guides cannot touch or lead their partners by the hand. They can only give them directions such as turn right, turn left, go straight, etc. They cannot use their native language, only English, to explain the cup's location. When they have found a cup, they must return it to the place that has been chosen by the teacher. I have them stack each cup on top of the cup they have just found. They remain blindfolded until they have completed finding and returning the cup to the proper place. Their partners must give them the directions on where to put the cup that has been found. As soon as a cup has been found and returned by one pair of students, the next pair goes, etc. The cups must be found and returned in order. The first team to find and return all the cups is the winner.

(3) Chinese Whispers

Aim: to practice time and pronunciation

Procedure: Have 2 teams in a U- shape facing each other: Team A and Team B. Call 2 representatives, one from each team, to your desk and whisper a time. Then they go back to their teams and whisper the time into the ear of the first person, who whispers it to the next person, and so on down the line. The last person writes it down and gives it to the person who whispered it first. Then the 2 original representatives run to write it on the board. If the words written on the paper and the board are the same, the fastest team scores a point; however, if it is not correct they have to go back and whisper it again. This encourages not only time recognition but good pronunciation, like distinguishing between 15 and 50 or 14 and 40. The students love this game.

3.4   Games for Revision

(1)   Jeopardy

“Jeopardy” is a team competition. The class is divided into several teams, for example, the “Fruit team” and the “Vegetable team”. The children can choose their own team names. The teacher draws a table on the board with different points corresponding to different questions as shown below:

Card recognition
 Text reading
 Question answering

Each team chooses an item and takes turns completing the task on the card. If the team picks the card, for example, card recognition, number 15, the teacher will show four flash cards for the child to say the matching English words. If the child says the words correctly, their team receives 15 points; however, an incorrect answer loss the team 15 points. More difficult or challenging items get more points. Therefore, card recognition number 20, the teacher can shoe eight flash cards. This game is very challenging for students. The team may win or lose more points when the children are giver more challenging activities to do. The team with the highest points scored wins the game.

(2) The Picnic

Aim: to review vocabulary

Procedure: This is a simple game that requires students to generate vocabulary in English. The class is asked to imagine that they are going on a picnic. Their job is to suggest things to bring along. The teacher says yes or no to each suggestion. What the students do not know is that the teacher says yes when a student suggests something whose first letter is the same as the first letter of the name of the student. The teacher says no if the first letter of the suggested object and the first letter of the name of the student do not match. For example: Alicia: I want to bring apples. Teacher: You can bring apples, Alicia. Alicia can bring apples. What do you want to bring, Marco? Marco: I want to bring a radio. Teacher: Sorry, you cannot bring a radio. If students need a hint, you can interject something like: Maria: I want to bring bananas. Teacher: Sorry, you cannot bring bananas. Why not ask Barbara to bring bananas? Usually someone figures out the game. Knowing the secret forces them to narrow their suggestions to words beginning with the same letter as their name.

Ⅳ. Conclusion

The series of theories and activities described above offer a great deal of advantages in stimulating students’ interests and enhancing their involvement in learning English. Classroom games can lead children to learn and practice target language in group or pair work. They make conversation and communicate with English during the games. The teacher designs different games for various levels of children and for different aims. The process of game is important than the result “winning or losing”. Children do not need to win actually. They just need the experience and the happiness during the games. This is the best way to show “learner-centered” teaching mode.

Children’s attention spans vary. So remember not to keep an activity so long in case the children lose interest. You may design different activities that are related to the theme which you’re working on. Then watch the students’ reaction and change activities at least 3-5 minutes to keep their attention or the pace of class quick. If you keep an activity soon, the children will want to go back to it soon, because they like to do interesting things over and over again. Feel free to repeat the activities as long as the children are still interested. Thus the target task can be well done.