The Application Of Games In English Phonetic Teaching In Rural Primary Schools

In the teaching process the author finds that a quantity of pupils have difficulty in pronouncing and memorizing new words,and cannot read the texts,let alonemake a conversation in simple English.One of the key reasons is that pronunciation teaching is inefficient at the beginning stage.So it influences the students' listening,speaking,reading and writing ability.Moreover,it will even cause the polarization phenomenon in primary schools.In current situation,the New National Curriculum has not an arrangement about when and how to teach pronunciation,and the phonetic symbols don't appear in the textbooks in primary school,either.Furthermore,there are few English lessons at school and students lack environment for communication.Thus,they merely recite the new words and texts,and a number of students use Chinese characters and pinyin to mark the new words' pronunciation.And this leads to their incorrect pronunciation,so their interest in learning English will reduce and their confidence will be affected.But in primary school if teachers teach phonetic knowledge mechanically,students will feel boring and tedious,and it will increase their burden.And this will make them lose the interest and enthusiasm in English,thus they will have fear of difficulty.Playing games is suitable for children's physiological and mental characteristics and game teaching can activate and cultivate pupils' interest.Therefore,if teachers design some vivid and practical games,and meanwhile use phonics to practise as much as possible,they will avoid the monotonousness and boredom of phonetic teaching.In the process of interactionlearners will obtain confidence and enhance autonomous and life-long learning ability.According to the theories of pedagogy,psychology and linguistics,the paper describes the function of games in phonetic teaching.The author tries to explore a method which uses games in the teaching of phonetic symbols and phonics,during learning letters,new words and texts,the pupils will improve their speaking,listening,reading and so on.The participants of this study are two natural classes' students who are from Grade Five,Huayuan Primary School in Yuechi.Before the experiment,the conditions of the two classes are almost the same.During the experiment,different methods in two classes were carried out by the same teacher.In the experimental class the teacher applied games like the bingo game to carry out phonetic teaching,make students know some pronunciation rules,understand the stress,rhythm,liaison and intonation and so on.While,the teacher carried out traditional teaching method in another class.The study lasted for a term,in the process of this study,the author collected the data in several ways,such as pretest,post-test,questionnaires,interviews and classroom observation.Through comparative analyses and discussions,in the end the author made the following conclusions: 1).Phonetic teaching can improve students' comprehensive language ability.2).Games can motivate the students' interest in English phonetic learning.3).It is more effective to use games in phonetic teaching than traditional English teaching.