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John Dewey, the American pragmatic philosopher and educator, proceeding from his activity theory, lays the philosophical foundation of game teaching. Dewey attaches great importance to children’s game activities’ effects in teaching. He emphasizes that children should learn by doing and should learn through experience. Students should use their minds in active occupation (Dewey, 68). This way, students would be willing to discuss and solve problems with abundant energy, so that their intelligence can be well developed.
In modern times, child psychology has developed a lot, which makes game teaching theory more mature. Piaget’s Cognitive Development Psychology lays a solid and scientific basis on game teaching modes. According to his large amounts of experiments, Piaget pides child’s thinking development into four stages. Each stage is marked by shifts in how kids understand the world. They are the sensorimotor stage, from birth to age 2, the preoperational stage, from age 2 to about age 7, the concrete operational stage, from age 7 to 11, and the formal operational stage, which begins in adolescence and spans into adulthood.
In our country, education has been paid much emphasis from ancient times. In the aspect
of game teaching, some educators studied on it long time ago. In Song and Ming Dynasty, many educators thought highly of children’s study interest. So they paid much attention to song and dance, poetry and stories. After the liberation, our country’s education has been developed vigorously. In modern times, Chen Heqin, who made great contributions to game teaching and even the whole education of China, thinks that it is a natural tendency for children to love games. He puts forward that games have following four values: developing physically and mentally, cultivating virtuousness, holding a keen brain and having a comfortable relax (Chen 54). With the development of game teaching theory, teachers can put into practice to raise classroom teaching efficiency.
3. Advantages of Game-teaching Method in English Teaching
Through the theories above we know that many psychologists and linguists suggest English teachers should obey the natural laws either in human’s psychological need or language itself while teaching. Playing games is children’s nature, so game teaching method is worthy to be applied in English teaching. Many primary English teachers prefer to use game-teaching method in class, and they hold the view that using games can surely do help for the teaching. Using games in English classroom has many advantages for teaching. Here are some specific examples to clarify the advantages.来!自~751论-文|网www.751com.cn
3.1 Learning the language unconsciously
In a game, children’s attention is not on the language used to play the game but on the result of the game. The children’s purpose of playing the game is to win. However, they have to use the language to communicate with each other. Games are fun and even shy children can be involved. When children play games, they will have more opportunities to repeat and practice the language they have already learnt. Language learning is not a simple work, however, games can make language learning more memorable and accessible in an interesting way. Games can give children more chances to be exposed to the language and practice the language. Therefore, during playing games, they learn and practice the language
unconsciously.
For example, teachers can prepare a bag, and then collect some students’ school things of all sorts of color in the bag. After that, teachers can select a pen or a book from the bag and then ask a student to answer what color is it .Then teachers can ask “what is it?” All the students answer “It is …”