【标题】 小学英语教学中游戏教学法的应用 【作者】方志敏
【关键词】游戏教学法；兴趣；教师的角色；小学英语教学 【指导老师】王露 【专业】英语
【正文】
I. Introduction
As English becomes more and more acceptable as an international language, it is increasingly highlighted in primary curricula. Our government has emphasized the importance that English has been a compulsory course in primary schools in the new curriculum issued by the State Education Commission in 2001.
However, how to teach children English as a second language is a puzzling question. It is well known that education in our country has been influenced by the deep-rooted examination-oriented system for a long time. In English class, the teachers explain every language point in detail, while students take notes all the time.1 It is just like teachers pouring water into a container. In addition, a great deal of grammar structure exercises leads to students memorizing vocabulary and grammar rules. Students’ interest in English is decreasing.
Interest is a good teacher for pupils to learn a foreign language. But what are young students interested in? Games. In order to make children
interested in learning English and be able to communicate with others, many scholars conduct researches about the relationship between games and teaching. As time moves on, contemporary game teaching not only became the main activity of children’s education but also embodied grades in primary school and became one of effective mechanisms of linking up kindergartens and primary schools. From modern age to the contemporary, game teaching theory has been improved step by step.
The paper studies the applications of games in primary English class by analyzing the games, the primary pupils’ psychological features and teachers’ role in operation of games. The focus of the thesis is how to operate games in English class.
II. Games in Primary English Teaching
Recently, as the importance of primary English teaching is greatly
highlighted by the whole society, primary English has been a compulsory course. However, primary school English methods are still under exploration and the pupils’ interest is decreasing. At the very beginning, children
have to face unfamiliar or unknown grammatical structures, words, texts and so on, and thus a high level of stress in the language classroom is naturally produced. As a result, game teaching methods are developed accordingly. A. Definition of Games in Primary English Teaching
According to Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied
Linguistics, “game” in language teaching can be defined as an organized activity that usually has the following properties: 1) a particular task or objective, 2) a set of rules, 3) competition between players, 4) communication between players by spoken or written language. Fun and laughter are essential ingredients in the complex process known as learning. Games should be regarded as an integral part of the language syllabus. They provide, in many cases, as much concentrated practice as a traditional drill and, more importantly, they provide an opportunity for real communication, albeit within artificially defined limits, and thus constitute a bridge between the classroom and the real world.
B. Characteristics of Games in Primary English Teaching
At some point during the primary grades, learning becomes serious business for many students. Lessons are less playful, hand-on experiences are placed by work sheets, exploration turns into memorization, and the joy of learning turns into the pursuit of good grades. Actually games may provide more opportunities for meaningful instruction and enjoyable learning than more traditional methods of teaching. According to Frederickson, games create a “bridge between learning and doing”.
Games should provide a novel approach to understanding concepts and
mastering skills. They also should teach social and academic skills in a natural way, in cooperative teams, rather than in the traditional, hierarchical classroom. Successful games invite students to analyze, strategize, and think flexibly. Players are encouraged to integrate prior knowledge with the new information or concepts that emerge during the competition in the operation of games.. Games may be the simple but most effective method of providing students with the structure, time, and incentive to practice a new skill. By the end of a single language arts games, students will have analyzed and applied specific grammar concepts such as parts of speech or sentence structure, word relationships such as synonyms, antonyms or analogies
Well-designed games contain an element of chance that has an equalizing effect. Games extend the playing field. They engage students as active, hands-on participants, and keep them focus until they reach the end of the game path.2 Games provide the added benefit of challenging students’ physical energy in appropriate ways.
Briefly, a game has to be 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. A game needs supervision from the teacher. The game is conducted by the teacher who acts as judge, scorer. It is easier
for students to keep going. Compared with pair or group work, a game has a ludic element that other interaction patterns do not have. This makes the activity more attractive.
C. Types of Games in Primary English Teaching Most children who start foreign language instruction do not have autonomous motivation to learn a foreign language. Children will learn better if they are motivated and want to do it. Phillips points out “games in foreign language teaching help students to see learning English enjoyable and rewarding. Playing games in the classroom develops the ability to co-operate, to compete without being aggressive, and to be a good loser.” In fact, games in teaching can be divided into different categories. It is pointed out in Games for Language Learning that games can be classified into several groups according to their function, teaching content and language skills training, and nature. In the aspect of function, games can be grouped into picture games, psychology games, magic tricks, question and answer games, guessing and speculating games, card and board games, sound games, story games, word games, true or false game and etc, which are easy for the teachers to handle3.
According to functions of them, games can be found to give practice in all skills, namely, reading, writing, listening and speaking, and for many types of communication, that is, encouraging, criticizing, agreeing and
explaining. The terms “information gap” and “opinion gap” are now widely used to describe features essential to so much communication in our daily life. Classified by teaching content and language skills training, games can be grouped into structure games, vocabulary games, spelling games, pronunciation games, number games, listen-and-do games, read-and-do games, writing games, role play and intelligence games. Moreover, classified by game nature, there are four types as cooperative games, competitive games, communication games and code-control games.
D. Advantages of Games in Primary English Teaching
Language learning is hard work. One must make an effort to understand, to repeat accurately, to manipulate newly understood language and to use the whole range of known language in conversation or written composition. Games are fun and children like to play them. Through games children have chances to experiment, discover, and interact in a proper environment. Games add variation to a lesson and increase motivation by providing a plausible incentive to use the target language. Games can provide this stimulus. The game context makes the foreign language immediately useful to the children with its stimulus. It brings the target language to children’s real life. The games make the reasons for speaking plausible even to reluctant children. Through playing games, students can learn English in the way children learn their mother tongue without being aware that they are studying; thus without stress, they can learn a lot, even shy students can participate positively.
Games can help the teacher to create contexts in which language is useful and meaningful. The learners want to take part and understand what others are saying or have written, and they must speak or write in order to express their own points of view or give information.
Many games offer as much density of practice as more conventional drill exercises. The contribution of drilling lies in the concentration on a language form and its frequent use during a limited period of time. Games can be found to give practice in all the skills, in all stages of the teaching and learning sequence.
III. Primary Pupils’ Psychological Factors Affecting the English Teaching
Interest is increasingly being recognized as an effective motivation for language learning. Most successful language learners are those talented and greatly motivated students. What motivates them is exactly what interests them most. Primary school English teaching should choose materials and activities according to students’ interests. To make game teaching methods more effective in primary English class, the psychological features of primary pupils have to be taken into accounts. A. Definition of Interest Interest has been variously defined as a kind of consciousness accompanying and stimulating attention, a feeling pleasant or painful directing
attention – the pleasurable or painful aspect of a process of attention- and as identical with attention itself. It focuses our mental gaze in order to attain a clearer or more distinct view. It results in a deeper and more lasting impression, and therefore plays a vital part in each cognitive act and in the growth of knowledge as a whole.
In fact, interest is also an important factor in the aspect of education. Teachers must understand and grasp the children’s psychology, especially interest. Only do so, teachers can awaken and sustain the interest of the pupil, so much greater and more effective will be the English teaching and learning. Wholesome intellectual, social and esthetic interests are amongst the most effective agencies for overcoming the temptations to drink, gambling, or other degrading forms of amusement. B. Motivation and Study
For primary school students, motivation is a factor in enhancing their foreign language learning. The motivation for learning a foreign language for kindergarten may be very different from that of older learners, because young children do not usually ask to learn a foreign language.4
Where does their motivation come from? Initially, their motivation comes from their parents who enroll them in the kindergarten English course. Therefore, during the learning of a second language, parental support and encouragement are also important. The expectations and attitudes of parents in a society regarding the foreign languages can also influence the results of children’s learning. On the contrary, if society and parents have a
negative attitude toward the foreign language, it will decrease the interest in learning that language. Second, the English learning results of a young beginner are to a large extent dependent on the teacher. The teacher can give children encouragement and praise to motivate them. The personality of the English teacher and the teacher’s treatment of students also have an influence on young children’s ability to learn a second language. Thirdly, if the teaching is appropriate, children will discover that learning anther language is within their capacity and this knowledge will strengthen their motivation. Children’s motivation comes from the
enjoyment and pleasure experienced in the learning situation. How can a learning situation be joyful? This joyfulness can be found in English classes full of play. Play combined with structured teaching so that the children are only aware of the play content and learn the foreign language almost without noticing difficulties.
C. Psychological Features of Primary Pupils
1. Cognitive Development of Primary School Pupils
Some of the researches in this field are concerned with the “Critical Period Hypothesis” which suggests that, in the years before puberty, a child’s brain is particularly adaptable for acquiring languages and language acquisition that takes place after puberty will be different in nature and potentially less successful.5 Interest is a best teacher. Some evidence supports the claim that younger pupils are superior in both oral and aural performance and as children get older, a decline in the quality of native-like pronunciation is evident.
Children generally are not consciously interested in language for its own sake and usually tend to direct their interest towards things that are easy for them to understand. They possess a natural desire to actively
participate in the social life around them that helps them to learn new languages.6 If they know how to pronounce a word it is easy for them to add it to their speaking vocabulary, the immediate uses of the language makes for communicative confidence.
Early adolescence is a time of tremendous variability among individuals of the same gender and chronological age. Children can be said to be intellectually at risk, because whether they engage with academic learning, or do not, can have lifelong consequences.7 They often exhibit a strong willingness to learn what they consider to be useful, and enjoy using skills to solve real-life problems. On the other hand, with children in the concrete operational stage, learning activities should involve exercises of classification, ordering, location, and conservation using concrete objects. Children are relatively more field-dependent, so teachers should try to provide a rich and stimulating environment with ample objects to play with. 2. Features of Children’s Attention
We usually say that young children have short attention spans. Cohen argues
小学英语教学中游戏教学法的应用
