教育游戏在小学英语中的应用
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
encourage the shy students, since it requires the participation of all the members of a
team, group or pair. Some typical activities may include the completion of a drawing,
putting things in order, grouping things, finding pairs or finding hidden things.
Students are involved in the exchange of information to complete the task and in
giving instructions. For example:
Title: Cards on the Table
Aim: To memorize the correct spelling of words in an enjoyable way.
Procedure: First, give the students one letter card each, and clear a space in the
classroom and put a table in the middle. Then have the students stand in a circle round
the table, 3 or 4 meters from it. Each student has one letter card each.Then the teacher
calls out words he wants to revise, one at a time, and any student who holds a letter
that is in that word must run forward and put the letter on the table.The last person
who puts his letter down must spell the word and give its meaning. If unsuccessful,
he/she is out of the game, and the teacher gives the correct answer. Students should
take back a different letter from the table each time, i.e. they should swap with
someone else.