A Study On Stimulating Students’ Learning Interest Through Game-play In The Primary School ESL Classroom

English is the most widely used languages in the world, it has become one of the necessary tools in the social activities and international communication. English learning and English teaching get more attention of the whole society, and English at the primary stage is an important compulsory course. Worthy of our attention, however, is that the primary school English teaching is still in the initial stage of an immature, there are all sorts of problems, and especially primary school students’ learning interest is decreasing. They have no fun in the primary ESL classroom and become more and more passive in their performance of English.English Curriculum Standard by the Ministry of Education of Chinese government (2011) points that: especially in primary school, teachers should pay more attention to arouse students’learning interest. Interest is the best teacher of language learning. Only the students have an interest in English language, they will take the initiative to learn it. And at present, it is a very important task for the teachers to stimulate primary school students’interest in learning English. It is clear that, learning interest plays a very important role in primary school English learning. Stimulate students’learning interest and mobilize their enthusiasm to learn English is the only way to change them from passive receivers to active learners. However, it calls for proper methods which may, for some, be difficult to achieve. Through the game-play in the ESL classroom can stimulate their interest in learning English,because it fits the characteristics of the physiological and psychological development of the pupils. For the children, the game is their life. They love the game, because playing is their nature. Through the game-play, the children gain a variety of capacities, learn to act, and feel the joy and success of learning which is very helpful in children’s lifelong learning.In this thesis, the study of learning interest and their supporting theories are the theoretical basis. The author intended to explain the effectiveness and feasibility of game-play in the primary school ESL classroom for stimulating students’learning interest through tests (experiment teaching), questionnaires, interviews and classroom observation and their data analysis. The author proposes some suggestions and lists some important methods and guidelines on the game-play in an ESL classroom in order to improve the quality of English teaching in primary school.