Using Games To Arouse Students’Learning Interests In Primary School English Teaching

English Curriculum Standards (2001) specifies that stimulating learning interest on the part of students should be prioritized, and the cultivation of various skills is built on interest. Therefore, interest is the "mother of success" in English teaching. Vivid and lively games are used in class to keep the attention of the children so that their interests in English learning could be stimulated. Based on experiment research, this paper applies game teaching approach, attempting to introduce game teaching approach to the practice of primary school English teaching for the purpose of creating a relaxing and pleasant environment for students. Game teaching approach aims at the targets of the dispersing difficulties, reducing difficulties, improving interests of students, and enhancing teaching efficiency.The research subjects are82students from two natural classes of Grade Three at No.5Primary School in Daxing District in Beijing. In the entire process of the experiment, the teacher applied two different teaching approaches during the teaching experiment. She used game teaching approach in the experimental class, and traditional teaching approach in the control class. After the comparative analysis of data gathered from the pre-test, post-test and two questionnaires carried out before and after the experiment, the following conclusions are reached. Game teaching is better at stimulating learning interest on the part of students and better at promoting teaching efficiency than traditional teaching approach. More importantly, game teaching allows students to acquire language skills in a relaxing atmosphere, which is hardly attainable by traditional teaching approach.