A Study On The Game-based Approach In Primary School English Teaching

As the most widely used language, English has become a must for talents in the21st century, thus "English teaching from primary school should be the head of the’dragon’of English education."With the title of "Game-based Teaching Approach (GTA) in Primary School Students’ English Learning", this study intends to conduct an experiment to testify a hypothesis:the games-based teaching approach can stimulate students’interest in English classes in primary school; compared with traditional teaching approaches (TTA), the games-based teaching approach can improve students’ English score in English classes in primary school. The experiment subjects are sixty primary school students, aged from seven to ten, in Class One and Class Three of Grade Three of Furong Primary School, Dalian, in Northern China’s Liaoning Province. Class One is the experimental class taught with GTA while Class Three is the control class taught with traditional English teaching approaches.The study employs several research methods including quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis, literature analysis, description, comparison and contrast, experiments and case analysis. It is to illustrate the current situation of English teaching in primary school and the policies on primary school English teaching from Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China and to review the researches on GTA, psychological and cognitive characteristics of primary school students, teaching approaches used in primary school English teaching and GTA in primary school English teaching. Based on these, it produces a hypothesis and then tries to employ an experiment to test the hypothesis based on data collected on students’interaction, interest, answers and score grade in four types of classes—listening, speaking, reading and writing.The study finds that, generally, the game-base teaching approach can create an enjoyable environment for primary school students, stimulate their interest in English and help the primary students to learn English better. In detail, this approach is not effective in all the four types of class:in speaking and reading class, it is effective; in writing class, it can help but only a little; in listening class, it is no effective at all.