Ш A game should encourage students to focus on the use of language rather than on the language itself.
Ш A game should give students a chance to learn, practice, or review specific language material.
One more scholar, M. Martha Lengeling said the following:
'In an effort to supplement lesson plans in the ESL classroom, teachers often turn to games. The justification for using games in the classroom has been well demonstrated as benefiting students in a variety of ways. These benefits range from cognitive aspects of language learning to more co-operative group dynamics.'
General Benefits of Games
Affective:
- lowers affective filter
- encourages creative and spontaneous use of language
- promotes communicative competence
- motivates
- fun
Cognitive:
- reinforces
- reviews and extends
- focuses on grammar communicatively
Class Dynamics:
- student centered
- teacher acts only as facilitator
- builds class cohesion
- fosters whole class participation
- promotes healthy competition
Adaptability:
- easily adjusted for age, level, and interests
- utilizes all four skills
- requires minimum preparation after development
So language learning is a hard task which can sometimes be frustrating. Constant effort is required to understand, produce and manipulate the target language. Well-chosen games are invaluable as they give students a break and at the same time allow students to practice language skills. Games are highly motivating since they are amusing and at the same time challenging. Furthermore, they employ meaningful and useful language in real contexts. They also encourage and increase cooperation.
Games are highly motivating because they are amusing and interesting. They can be used to give practice in all language skills and be used to practice many types of communication.
2.1.3. Learning grammar through games
The collection of word games is a valuable resource for the teacher of young through adult learners of English as a second or foreign language. Focusing primarily on language development through the use of high frequency vocabulary and structures, they reinforce classroom lessons and provide additional spelling, conversation, listening and speaking practice.
The most instructive language learning games are those that emphasize specific structures. They do not only practice the basic pattern but also do so in a pleasant, easy way that allows the students to forget they are drilling grammar and concentrate on having fun. The following games are concerned with Yes/No questions, Wh-questions, tag questions, comparative and superlative, adverbs, modals, demonstratives, etc.
Most learners somehow accept that the sounds of a foreign language are going to be different from those of their mother tongue. What is more difficult to accept is that the grammar of the new language is also spectacularly different from the way the mother tongue works. At a subconscious, semiconscious and conscious level it is very hard to want to switch to “to be” (`I'm 23', `I'm hungry', `and I'm cold') if it is “have” in Italian.
Grammar is perhaps so serious and central in learning another language that all ways should be searched for which will focus student energy on the task of mastering and internalizing it. One way of focusing this energy is through the release offered by games. Teenagers are delighted to be asked to do something that feels like an out-class activity and in which they control what is going on in the classroom - they become the subjects, while for a lot of the 15,000 hours they spend in schools they are the objects of teaching. The point is that fun generates energy for the achievement of the serious goal.
Where exactly do such games fit into a teaching programme? Grammar games can be used in three ways:
· diagnostically before presenting a given structure area to find out how much knowledge of the area is already disjointedly present in the group;
· after a grammar presentation to see how much the group have grasped;
· as revision of a grammar area.
One should not use grammar games as a Friday afternoon `reward' activity. Using them as a central part of the students' learning process would be a better idea. Thus, each game is proposed for a given level ranging from beginner to advanced. This refers simply to the grammar content of that particular game. But, as it has been already mentioned above, a lot of activities can be adapted to different classes with different grammar components. By changing the grammar content a teacher can, in many cases, use the game frame offered at a higher or lower level. Generally, any frame can be filled with any structures you want to work on with your students. The students have to take individual responsibility for what they think the grammar is about. The teacher is free to find out what the students actually know, without being the focus of their attention. Serious work is taking place in the context of a game. The dice throwing and arguing lightens and enlivens the classroom atmosphere in a way that most people do not associate with the grammar part of a course. The `game' locomotive pulls the grammar train along. Everybody is working at once- the 15-30 minutes the average game lasts is a period of intense involvement.
Other reasons for including games in a language class are:
1. They focus student attention on specific structures, grammatical patterns.
2. They can function as reinforcement, review and enrichment.
3. They involve equal participation from both slow and fast learners.
4. They can be adjusted to suit the individual ages and language levels of the students
5. They contribute to an atmosphere of healthy competition, providing an outlet for the creative use of natural language in a non-stressful situation.
6. They can be used in any language-teaching situation and with any skill area whether reading, writing, speaking or listening.
7. They provide the immediate feedback for the teacher.
8. They ensure maximum student participation for a minimum of teacher preparation.
A game should be planned into the day's lesson right along with exercises, dialogues and reading practice. It should not be an afterthought.
Games are a lively way of maintaining students' interest in the language, they are fun but also part of the learning process, and students should be encouraged to take them seriously. They should also know how much time they have to play a game. It's not useful to start a game five minutes before the end of the lesson. Students are usually given a `five-minute warning' before the time is over so they can work towards the end.
The older the students are, the more selective a teacher should be in choosing a game activity. Little kids love movements, while older ones get excited with puddles, crosswords, word wheels, and poster competitions whatever.
Modern language teaching requires a lot of work to make a lesson interesting for modern students who are on familiar terms with computers, Internet and electronic entertainment of any kind. Sympathetic relations must exist not only among students but between students and a teacher. It's of special importance for junior students because very often they consider their teachers to be the subject itself, i.e. interesting and attractive or terrible and disgusting, necessary to know or useless and thus better to avoid.
A teacher should bear in mind that it is the content, not the form, which is of interest to the child. A toddler does not learn to say,”Cookie, please”, in her native language because she is practicing the request form. “Cookie, please” is learned because the child wants a cookie.
So children learn with their whole beings. Whole-child involvement means that one should arrange for the child's participation in the lesson with as many senses as possible. Seeing pictures of children performing actions and repeating, “The boy is running”, “The girl is hopping” is not at all as effective as when students do the actions themselves in response to commands and demonstrations from the teacher.
All said above is fairly true to adult learners not only children, because of our common human nature to possess habits through experience. We all learned to understand and speak our first language by hearing and using it in natural situations, with people who cared for and about us. This is the most effective and interesting way to learn a second language as well. The experts now advise language teachers to spend most of the classroom time an activities that foster natural acquisition, rather than on formal vocabulary and structure explanations and drills. They insist that “once you have become accustomed to the rewards and pleasures gained from teaching through activities, you will wonder how second-language teaching ever got to be anything else. Your own ideas for activities and their management will flow, and your students' learning rates will soar!” “Activities' mean action games, finger and hand-clapping games, jump rope and ball-bouncing games, seat and card games, speaking and guessing games and even handicraft activities. Judging the results we have nothing but believe them.
Chapter 2. Practice part
2.2.1 Games with prepositions
PREPOSITIONS OF TIME AND PLACE
1. MAGAZINE SEARCH
Materials: Magazines to share in groups
Dynamic: Small groups
Time: 15 minutes
Procedure: 1. On the board, write a list of prepositions of place that the students have studied. Divide the students into groups of three or four and give each group several magazines. You may want to ask students to bring in their own. If you are supplying them, be sure that they have full-page ads or other large pictures.
2. Give the groups a time limit and have them search through their magazines to find a picture that contains situations illustrating prepositions of place.
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