Teach English in Xiaojieji Zhen - Tongliao Shi

Learning as a process of acquiring new knowledge can sometimes be a heavy and tiring job. It demands to invest effort, energy, and a lot of time and that is why learning sometimes seems like something that is hard and undoable. Games are an important part of everyday life and one of the most important and most interesting things about childhood. The easiest way to learn new things is through games, to get to know the world around us, to meet new friends, to use our own ideas and imagination. It has been proven that learning a new language significantly contributes to the development of the brain and that children can learn and memorize better than grownups. I, as an anthropologist, consider learning of a new foreign language in the early stages of elementary school as very important because children of that age develop humanity and expand their cultural consciousness. The relationship between games and learning and how important it is for children is something that I will try to explain through an example game in my further work. Games are the most popular among children and the most efficient way to help a child to overcome a problem with a language is through a game. Every one of us while teaching babies to talk on our mother tongue do it most efficiently by showing them a certain object and pronouncing the name of that particular object. For example, if you take a ball and start to pass it towards the baby while pronouncing the name of the object, i.e. the ball, you are unconsciously participating in a game and process of learning. It is the same with learning a foreign language. There are two types of games: competitive games and team games. We will be focusing on the latter category. The group of children I have chosen are 8 years old, which means that children of this age already know how to write, have encountered the letters used in their own country, and also mastered the basics of English language learning. For children of this age studying in groups is most appropriate, games of logic, and building words. After finishing the lesson, where we expanded vocabulary by learning parts of the human body before the game starts, the teacher will sing a well-known song “Head and shoulders, knees and toes”. Here the teacher will draw the children’s attention by moving and singing, motivating them to participate and recall the body parts from the lesson, making it a good start of the game. At the very beginning of the game, children will take sticky notes and write one part of the body that they remember from the lesson and the song. Firstly, the parts of the body that we wrote we will stick on the board and then the teacher will separate children into two groups and explain to them what to do. It is simple: the first group of children is going to form a line of two and stand side by side of one another, while the other group is going to do the same on the other side, facing the first group. First group, i.e. the first participant is going to take the sticky note from the board which contains a part of the body and read what it says. After that, the child will walk towards the second group and stick the note on the first participant of that group, aiming the correct part of the body. Now that child needs to take another sticky note from the board and do the same with the first participant of the first group. We proceed to second participants from each group and continue until every child takes the turn. There are a couple of problems that we can encounter during this game towards which the teacher needs to pay great attention and react if necessary. Some children do not like to expose themselves and do not have enough confidence. If a child does not want to play the game because it is scared that it will not do something correctly the teacher needs to encourage it, to explain that the task is not so scary and complicated, and to provide the necessary support. It is possible that the child did not master materials from the lesson and that it cannot manage the pronunciation of new words. This is where the teacher needs to try and explain the word, or words, again in a different way, pronounce it correctly and clearly, and let the child repeat. In this essay, I tried to explain why games play an important role in learning a new language, as well as which game we can use in one of the lessons children need to pass while learning the English language. Sticky notes can be used for a wide range of other lessons and through all kinds of various games. The great Plato said long ago: “Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.” So, let’s play!