1.2 Aims of present study

Before the appearance of cognitive linguistics, language is explained and analyzed in language itself. Theory of cognitive linguistics provides us a new approach—the schematic approach which is direct viewing by which spatial relationship can be shown more clearly. But, during the teaching process, using schematic approach only will be boring and makes students distracting. At same time, game teaching method has been applied to many kinds of English teaching, including vocabulary and pronunciation. Few researches investigate the relation between games and preposition, if any, they investigate broad grammar teaching.

This thesis uses the game teaching method to teach English prepositions, taking on, in, at as examples. The participants are in Junior One from a junior school in Hangzhou. Why the author chooses junior one student is that they are in the key stage in English learning. In this study three research questions are addressed: 1) Can the game teaching method improve the learning of English prepositions?  2) Is it more efficient to teach the English prepositions by the game teaching method than traditional teaching methodology?  3) Was the interest of students’ English grammar learning increased using the game teaching method?

1.3 The organization of the thesis

The thesis consists of five parts. Part one is a brief introduction of the thesis. In this part, background information, aims of the present study and the organization of the thesis are included. Then the follows part is Literature review, which consists of definitions and classifications of prepositions and games, previous researches on teaching of English prepositions. In part three, the research methods are introduced and discussed. Tests, classroom observation and questionnaires are used here. Part four is research results and discussion, which is to discuss and analyze the results from tests, classroom observation and questionnaires in part three. The last part is conclusion. The author draws conclusion of the whole thesis, and points out the limitations of the thesis.