First of all, many teachers do not design classroom assessment standards and do not know how to design it in teaching work, especially aimed to the part of games. Also, there is no a perfect classroom game-assessment system. So it is time to make some changes. Teacher should make reasonable standards about game assessment and give each student more objective feedback more than ignore the significance of promoting students’ development with inpidual difference.
Secondly, the original motivation of game teaching in English class is to combine the knowledge with games and aims to interest students, however, in fact, the design of games will be inevitably limited by the different study abilities of students, the teaching requirements and other object factors. In this case, a class cannot meet every student’s need. And in order to take into account of the interests of the majority, the teacher will give fewer opportunities to underachievers to join in games. Apparently, it’s a wrong handing method that will probably hinder the motivation of these students to have a try and get another reflection. Therefore, teacher should offer each student the same opportunity to join in.
Thirdly, the most fundamental problem is that students lack of learning motivation. Especially, the underachievers are not interested in it or they don’t have motivation to study. If teachers could meet every inpidual’s interest or psychological need in the classroom, it would be an ideal for the English teaching and learning. However, as a matter of fact, it’s quite hard to achieve and there are a great deal of students do not like English. For underachievers, the problem is more obvious and the negative effects are more direct.
Apparently, as a popular teaching method advocated among middle schools, English game teaching method indeed still exists some problems. And the researcher found that those problems might have some negative effects on underachievers’ study. And there is not so much literature about the games’ problems involved with underachievers, so the significance of this research could be impressed.
All in all, this paper mainly talks about the problems in the practical application of English game teaching method in middle school involved with underachievers’ study and find out the specific reasons. And in the end of this paper, the researcher makes some suggestions according to the actual situation and hope that they will be helpful to middle school English game teaching.
2. Literature Review
This chapter is elaborated from brief review of studies on the definition of English game teaching, underachievers, class assessment, class participation and the relevant theories concerning interest and motivation.
2.1 Studies on English game teaching
As an international communication tool, English language is playing an important role in junior high school education at home and a variety of English teaching methods in class have been taken into consideration since 1800s.
2.1.1 Definitions of English game teaching
English game teaching, called game-based teaching, is a groundbreaking combination of games and teaching, that teacher conducts knowledge representation to students through the form of playing games or transits steps by games. The aim of English game teaching is to let students gain knowledge by creating a relaxing atmosphere; offer a platform where students can learn by playing.
Until now, many experts have raised some new ideas about the games for teaching. Spodek Bernard and Saracho Olivia(1994:271) held the view that games are a different kind of play activity. They are highly structured and include specific rules to be followed. Campell Linda, Campell Bruce and Dickson dee claimed teachers should consider the advantages of games: the ability to capture students’ attention, lower students’ stress and give students the ability the chance for real communication. Lee Su Kim (1995:35) offered five advantages of games: 1. Game learning differs from regular classroom language learning 2. Challengeable games can strongly stimulate students’ motivation and strengthen their aspects of ability 3. Games help students with the comprehensive ability to solve problems 4. Games effectively motivate students to communicate and cooperate with others 5. Games create a real platform where students can use English in pleasure 英语课堂游戏对后进生的负面影响(2):http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_50016.html