The Application Of Games In Primary School English Teaching

English became a compulsory course for the third grade pupils in primary school in2001. The latest English curriculum standard for elementary education laid out somerequirements on English teaching. Among those, the most important is to build students’interest and self-confidence. However, the traditional teaching method made students losttheir interests in learning English. And it also has a negative impact on their scores. Onmy way of solving these problems, I begin to focus on the games.Firstly, I summarized the related study on the application of games in instruction, athome and aboard. Then, I made a research on the definition, the features, the functions ofgames and the rules when using games. This study is based on the ‘game person’ theory,the ‘happy education’ theory and the ‘constructivism’ theory. Besides, in order to knowthe students better, I also made a detailed study on their learning psychology. Accordingthis study, I found that, the features of their learning psychology need their teacher to usesome active instructional activities like games.This study is trying to solve these two questions: Can games improve students’English learning scores? Can games arouse pupil’s interest in learning English? Withthese questions, I started an experiment which lasted two months. In this experiment, Ichoose two classes from my hometown as the experimental class and the controlled class.In the experimental class, games are used in teaching English, while in the controlledclass, traditional teaching methods are used. In this experiment, I carried out2questionnaires and1pretext,1post text and4unit texts. And the results show that usinggames in primary school English teaching can arouse pupil’s interest in learning Englishand can improve their English learning scores. Besides, pupils’ learning characteristicsneed use to use games in teaching. Meanwhile, during my experiment, I also found somequestions. The application of games in primary school English teaching needs our furtherstudying.