Teaching English To Young Learners: Exploring Pedagogical And Psychological Potentials Of Games

English is an important and special tool for communication now in China. There has been a trend in English education at younger age throughout the whole nation when the National Educational Department set up the policy of teaching English from Grade 3 at the primary school. Children's Learning English has become a fashion for the whole society.The thesis begins with a little kid who has learnt English for some years but later lost interest in English. Therefore we would like to seek a more efficient way to teach young learners English well at primary school. Due to children's cognitive and psychological nature, we should follow the growing capacity of little children and take the method appropriate to their personal development. We believe that English teaching through games is a very efficient method to arouse their interest in learning, helpful to develop children's physiological characteristics and motivating for them to seek more knowledge.The thesis analyzes several episodes of classroom observation and records with the purpose of investigating the pedagogic nature of game. I take the research methods by interview, classroom observation, and questionnaire to collect data I needed. The data were collected from many classes in different schools, most of which were from Hangzhou Qiushi Education Group. The thesis also reports a survey of general situation of game teaching in the pupils of Grade 3 and Grade 6 by using the questionnaire.The thesis presents the history and the present condition of the game teaching, and then analyses the classroom data from the following perspectives of investigation: cross-subjects, competition, interest and learning by doing. Two cases using input hypothesis from Stephen Krashen were also investigated by looking at the levels of difficulty and the discourse control in the gameIn the conclusion, the author argues that game is not just a method for fun The young learners are the center of the class meanwhile the game should apply the principles such as the interest-focus principle, task-based principle and multi-intelligences development principle. Playing game is to nourish kids' curiosity of learning English language. We hope young learners can develop their intelligence through the game.