A Research On The Application Of Games In English Vocabulary Teaching In Primary Schools

Along with the information age is the globalization, which makes English become increasingly important, English has become the second official language in many nonEnglish speaking countries. In China, English has been taken as an important course in the country’s basic education for a relatively long time, but it is not a long period that primary English teaching as the cornerstone of English education has been carried out. Therefore, many teaching approaches and methods are under trying. In primary schools, teaching English vocabulary is one of the most important parts. But our teachers usually take traditional ways to teach words due to the education they gained when they were taught English, which makes students lose interest in studying English words gradually and their competence of life-long learning can be influenced, too.For primary school students, interest is vital to their study. Game is the way they like most. Because they are born to play, grow up in games and study in games. To some extent, game is the way they exist. So, when games combine with words teaching can meet both the psychological and physical needs of the students, to apply games in vocabulary teaching can be an effective way. But the problem is that there are still some defects when teachers apply games in vocabulary teaching, such as the games lack of design or very old that children don’t like and so on, which makes students lose interest and motivation in studying English words.This thesis is going to do research on the application of games in English vocabulary teaching in primary schools through survey, interview and observation. And this thesis also tries to answer the following three questions:(1) the current situation of the application of games(aims, types and frequency of the application of games) in English vocabulary teaching in primary schools;(2) teachers’ attitude towards the application of the games.(3) the factors which influence the EFL teachers to apply games in vocabulary teaching in primary schools.Through research, the writer found out that the games applied in vocabulary teaching are quite few and most of them are very old ones, which are mainly used for leading in words or words drilling. For the teachers, they do think that games are useful in vocabulary teaching, but they are reluctant to apply games in vocabulary teaching due to the lack of game resource or limitation of time. The main factors that influence the EFL teachers to apply games in vocabulary teaching are that teachers lack of theory on games teaching, they don’t have enough time to prepare games or carry out a game in the class or the condition of their schools are not optimistic for applying games in vocabulary teaching.