The Application Of Vocabulary Games In Primary School

English Vocabulary Teaching

Abstract
Vocabulary is one main factor of languages; it occupies a pivotal position in English.
Enlarging your vocabulary is the prerequisite to improve students ' listening, speaking,
reading and writing. At present, vocabulary teaching is a big problem in the teaching
English in primary schools: almost all of the children were caught up in the beginning
of learning English, but as time went on, the deepening of study, learning requires
improvement, expansion of vocabulary, part of the students ' interest and motivation
in learning drops, vocabulary goes down. Due to the pupils ' age, fun, unwilling to
devote more energy to spend on expanding vocabulary, therefore, almost all
elementary school students when mentioned English vocabulary, became a headache
and didn't want to remember. Changing English vocabulary teaching methods from
mechanical drills, rote, mechanical repetition gives pupils positive attitudes, and make
them remember words easier and faster.
Through this practice I would like to explore more suited methods to English
vocabulary teaching in primary schools, in the promotion and application of English
teaching in the future, making our students not afraid to talk about the vocabulary,
laying a solid foundation for students in learning English, making students happy.
This essay has three chapters. The first one introduces the background of English
vocabulary and significance. The second chapter shows Present Situation of English
Vocabulary Learning. The last chapter describes the application of vocabulary games
in primary school English vocabulary teaching, and the methods.

Key words English vocabulary teaching; Primary school; Vocabulary

games

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Research Background

With the development of the educational formation, lots of teaching methods have
been used, and some new methods have been adopted in teaching practice. In English
teaching in primary schools, teachers start to care for students moods, arouse
students interest, develop the efficient teaching strategies and help students build
comprehensive application ability of the language. And a great number of teachers get
used to having games to motivate their students in classes and they have achieved
their goal and made progress in the teaching (Wang, 2009).
After stepping into junior middle schools, students have rarely seen any games in
their English classes. For a long time, the situation of English teaching in our
country is not satisfactory: English classes are hidebound, teaching methods are
scarce, and unable to evoke students passion in learning English.
Krashen says, When students travel, they do nit carry grammar books, they carry
dictionaries. Wilkins believes that Without grammar very little can be conveyed;
without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.

1.2 Significance of the research

The English Curriculum Standards of Full-time Compulsory Education stress that the
innovative curriculum should be based on students learning interest, life experience
and recognition development, should advocate experiencing, practicing, participating,
adopting the cooperative and communicative modes of learning and the task-based
approaches of teaching. The game teaching changes the traditional teaching modes,
and caters for the demands of the curriculum reform.

1.3 Outline

Through this practice I would like to explore more suited methods to English
vocabulary teaching in primary schools, in the promotion and application of English
teaching in the future, making our students not afraid to talk about the vocabulary,
laying a solid foundation for students in learning English, making students happy.

Chapter Two Literature Review

Vocabulary is the most basic of language learning, just like the houses of brick and
tile cement and steel, none of these are afford to build tall buildings. Vocabulary in the
language is the Foundation. But there is no the best and most effective method for
students to learn vocabulary, some students often feel dull and boring about how hard
to remember vocabulary, students often complain that the words are difficult to
remember and easy to forget, so that they always fall short of expectations. In order to
overcome the weakness of the vocabulary, many educators teach classroom with
game , of course, among them there are some good success stories, yet there are some
colleagues can not get it. The articles below will explain the application of games in
vocabulary teaching principle and application of the principles expounded in a
professional manner, trying to make readers traceable, apply flexibility in the future
work of game teaching correctly.

2.1 The principle of Vocabulary Games Teaching

The first principle of game is to make vocabulary objects in the game scene reproduce
in a particular frequency, then how to grasp this particular frequency? Ebbinghaus
forgetting curve shows that words forgotten laws that the time began to accept new
words within a short time will be forgot in the fastest time, so we should try to
incorporate new words inserted into classroom lessons games, and according to time
relative to historical vocabulary, from dense to sparse in the game again. And this is a
acting experience which is difficult to precisely quantify the frequency, cannot be
simple to reproduce on the spot, and return in a few days, and then again a few days
later, but should be based on the students ' memories and keep on repeating to qualify
further relaxation of the time limit, so as to bring a large vocabulary into long-term
memory, and achieve the goal of accumulating.

The second principle is to let students in with all of their senses. Who had been stung
by bees must run when remembering the stung again and lingering memories.
Remember when learning in educational psychology contact a subject called Proust,
namely through the phenomenon of taste memories. Proust phenomenon refers to that
after smell of a particular stimulus, reminiscent of the past can be memoried. In 2001,
the United States and Mongolia, Rachel Herz from Chemical Senses Center
demonstrates this phenomenon. Research Group provided some photos and specific
taste to the people and then let people smell which makes people get a specific taste
before. Results showed that those memories associated with it in the human brain
consciousness in the central nervous system. This means that, in a variety of sensory
signals, if strike one, then, memories and perceptions associated with signal will
respond to wake up all the memories. Now those expensive auxiliary electronics
product publicity around "eyes, ears, hands and brain five-dimensional stereo
memory" is actually using this principle. Classroom games should not only be
designed as we dialogue around the desks and chairs, we should dance, laugh, and
have colorful, spicy sweet and sour study life. In such a strong sensory stimulation,
the vocabulary in one game which words could easily become memories, and that will
strength the life's memories.

The third principle of the game is to be moderately interesting. Everyone knows that
is not fascinating when a game is boring, but we probably didn't think funny
classroom games is too hard to control risk factors. Classroom games as auxiliary
means for timely review instead of distracting, directly affects the student's absorption
of main courses, initial acceptance of new words memory greatly reduced, but much
is not good.

The last principle of game is to be suitable level of difficulty. Classroom game is not
the sole stage of top students, especially those memory activities such as vocabulary
games. If the game participant have a wrong example on the stage, other audience
will have a negative memory. However, when the participant set a right example, it
not only has a goof effect of reviewing the vocabulary, but also gives people positive
energy and motivation which really helps in the future. Such positive feelings implied
that psychology called the Pygmalion effect, or Bi Malong effect; this is a
psychological phenomenon, which should attract the attention of educators who
interested in educational psychology. To describe vocabulary teaching class game,
when people who succeed in memorizing up game involving of vocabulary, they get
favor around and himself certainly, to meet continued this self-esteem of
psychological they looks forward to, the student hinted his constantly efforts memory
on vocabulary, and once has confident of experience, this efforts is fruitful, this will
be a gratifying benign cycle, this is Pygmalion effect. Pygmalion has particularly
significant and measurable effects to students to the underachievers out of feelings of
inferiority and inertia. Thus, if games can be reasonable flexibility use in vocabulary
teaching , the effects will be able to meet the Group's leap.

Chapter Three Research Design

3.1 Research Questions

This thesis does a upper primary students study on English vocabulary learning
strategies training through a more comprehensive survey, to understand primary
school learners ' vocabulary learning strategies which are most commonly used, and
analyzing influence of different lexical basis effect strategy training on vocabulary.
Meanwhile, this research helps students who in the embryonic stage of elementary
school to learn English better by important vocabulary learning strategy training.
Stimulate pupils ' interest in learning English helps pupils to form a more effective
vocabulary learning strategies, develop pupils ' good habit of learning English
vocabulary.

3.2 Paticipants

293 students from one primary school as the object did this study, these students are
the primary six students. Questionnaires issued 293, excluding unqualified 15
questionnaires, the last real valid questionnaires were collected, 278. Based on
concurrent vocabulary levels test scores before and after 54 and 54 district is divided
into high and low are divided into two groups. Participants were between the ages of
11-12 years, 3-6 year of learning English.

3.3 Instruments

Using quantitative and qualitative research. Qualitative research using interviews and
discussion as a research tool. For the questionnaire used in this study "English
vocabulary learning beliefs and strategies". Wen qiufang reference book, the empirical
study on the English learning strategies of many experts and professors in the
questionnaire, and learning strategies of English vocabulary is divided into three main
areas: Metacognitive, cognitive, social/emotional tactics, which were included in the
questionnaire. Then, according to these experts and professors to study specific
strategy is effective, combining English vocabulary learning strategy training in the
primary school feasibility, for filtering. In order to prevent individual participants in
filling out answers at random, affect the test result, all topics have been upset that
follows. 5 options in each issue, representing the frequency of the behavior. Score
using 5-point scoring of the question, do so five-level assessment. Score 1 = never, 2
= not usually use, 3 = sometimes, 4 = often, 5 = always use. Higher scores in types of
beliefs and strategies, indicating that the subjects receiving the vocabulary learning
beliefs or the higher level of vocabulary learning strategies.

3.5 Data Collection

Results of students who have different base

High1 Number Before SD After SD

Training Training
Low2 % %
M% M%
1. I will make English 1 6 43.33 70.01 54.33 91.03
learning plan.
2 7 56.34 80.36 82.34 90.15
2. I can understand my 1 6 46.77 92.23 53.23 95.34
pro and con.
2 7 57.89 77.56 66.90 82.45
3. I review my English 1 6 56.78 93.24 41.67 89.54
regularly.
2 7 61.09 82.12 45.30 88.36
4. I will notice the 1 6 43.87 87.87 46.54 93.34
frequent vocabulary.
2 7 41.07 79.43 47.31 92.89
5. I can use creativity to 1 6 47.67 87.63 82.56 91.23
memory.
2 7 39.87 85.36 81.98 83.98
6. I can guess the 1 6 48.93 96.34 38.33 94.08
meaning by the context.
2 7 38.98 79.65 35.70 81.20
7. I will use dictionary. 1 6 46.78 94.78 40.67 85.67

2 7 41.49 86.03 44.33 87.12

8. I memory by stupid 1 6 65.34 73.00 77.34 92.87
way.
2 7 57.89 1.134 37.04 84.23
9. I will classify them. 1 6 43.44 93.47 48.09 91.09

2 7 67.35 89.10 49.16 87.62

10. I will repeat 1 6 43.33 92.35 37.69 91.09
vocabulary.
2 7 53.84 86.21 29.85 83.27
11. I will put them into 1 6 38.46 79.52 43.98 75.27
sentences.
2 7 37.04 71.23 45.38 82.61
12. I will read more to 1 6 37.08 93.56 47.66 94.36
enhance my vocabulary.
2 7 42.54 .900 51.39 82.76

Chapter Four Results and Analysis

4.1 Analysis of the results of the questionnaire

From the survey, no matter high score students or low score students, it is easy to
notice that more students would love to remember English vocabulary by frequent
display, guessing, using creativity and putting them into sentences. So that, using
vocabulary games in primary school English vocabulary teaching might be a good
way to help them remember through frequent display, guessing, using creativity and
putting them into sentences.

4.2 Analysis of the results of the tests

There are lots of games to help use remember words. Active is a primary nature of
games, they are willing to accept a form of learning and knowledge by learning in the
game, to learn to communicate in games, to stimulate students ' interest in the game.
How to transform the classroom into effective classroom is pursued by teachers, using
methods to improve the teaching efficiency of the game is what teacher wants.
Several kinds of methods mainly has been introduce in the following thesis.

1. Tan Words

Given by the teacher, from access to another word, requires that the first letters of
words with same endings of the words given by the teacher. The game is simple, but
very effective, can rapidly mobilize class atmosphere and broke the students ' thinking,
Student Council manages to remember his words in my head. For example:
morning-good-dear-reason.

2. The riddle

A riddle is a mental game, there are lots of interesting riddles in English, I pick up
some simple, suitable for school children in the teaching level, or just making some
riddles, guiding students to use their brains, in the study of puzzles to find interest in
learning.

3. Crossword

That gives some letters in the box below and fill in other letters by students to make it
horizontal and vertical words, cultivate students ' divergent thinking, inductive
thinking abilities.

B U
L
A
S

4. Card Flash
Teachers prepare Flash cards, write the words on the card, or the painted word
pictures, flashing in front of students, flashing speed from slow growing fast, let the
students speak out the words. This game allows students to quickly familiarize
themselves with the new words, you can review previous lessons learned words.

5. Magic eye

Put pictures to teach the new words on the Blackboard, a teacher stood, glanced to the
Blackboard, and then let the students guess the teacher just to see which picture, then
to determine its answers. In this process, teachers quickly, try to turn the students said.
Although the game is not difficult, but it can make the most of the students involved.

Chapter Five Conclusion

5.1 Findings of the study

With my research theme, the applications of the games in vocabulary teaching, I

collect, analyze and summarize the typical teaching cases of vocabulary teaching.
Now several cases among them are shown to analyze the main characteristics and
problems of the games teaching applied in vocabulary teaching in he primary school
and how the teachers deal with these problems to fulfill the optimization of the game
teaching.

Case 1 The game: Pass and Guess

In module 3 new school, the students have learned names of the places in a school,
such as gym, office, library, dinning hall, science lab. In module 2, they just learned
words of places outside a school- factory, hospital, hotel, university, etc. Therefore, in
the review class, the teacher intended to have a summary.

The game process: teacher writes English and Chinese names of all the places they
have learned in there 2 modules on the blackboard, reads to the students and asks
them to follow. Or teacher just shows the Chinese out, asking students to say out its
English pronunciation. Among 5 students asked, none of them may mistake.
T: I think you are familiar with those words already, now Ill give you a minute to
think how to act out the places, or you can discuss it with your partner. For example,
to act hotel you can do it like this. (Teacher put her hands together to look like
sleeping.) Then when you are ready, I will form some teams to come to the
blackboard to have a competition. Each team has six students and stand in a line.
Except the firt one in this line, the other ones must turn around in order not to see
which word I point to the first guy. After he first one sees the word, he will act it to
the one next to him, but the other guys must not to peep, or the task failed.

Analysis of the case, when review the class, it has multiple teaching objects which
apparently do not just consist of one aspect- vocabulary, and generally speaking, the
teaching content of vocabulary contains three parts, meaning, information, the usage,
namely, grammatical rules of the using the word. From the game that took up nearly
half of the class we can know its objective of knowledge is just to train students to the
words meaning and pronunciation, which is obviously not proportional to the time it
cost.

Moreover, in construction and operation of the game itself some issues are well worth
reflecting on. First of all, whether the number of members in a team, 6, is proper: The
reason why the game was so attracting is that the distortion in pass of actions is funny
to the audience students and meanwhile meets the participators desire of perform. If
only a few participants in a team, the distortion will be weakened, so will the
playfulness and attraction of the game. In this sense it is reasonable that the teacher
had 6 students in a team. Second, does each team have to need five chances to score?
As interviewed, the teacher gave her answer- its convenient to score, and to increase
discrimination lastly, the only three teams were incited? The teacher explained that
she had wanted the games to involve as many students as possible, but she knew the
limitation of the time, and the spectators are supposed to be as impressed as the
participants to the words.

Last but not least, another phenomenon is that some participating students showed
embarrassment during the gaming, namely, they, especially grail, became shy to act,
not so naturally as themselves in primary schools. The psychological root of this
behavior can be found as follow: self-awareness develops into the first peak, and
students in primary schools start to process sense of adult, desire establishment of the
role as an adult, and especially they need respect from peers. Entering adolescence,
teenagers express dramatic growing of self-respect sense which intensity and
sensitiveness feature. In the game, therefore, they actually attach too much
importance to their own performance in public. With the growing age, the tendency
will be more and more obvious. In the gaming, fortunately, the teacher noticed the
tendency, and took some subtle actions to avoid the issue- the teacher not only
encourage the students constantly who participated the games with less self-assurance,
but also gave the audience some explanation of the participants performance in time,
which is of great necessity to ensure the smooth operation of the game.

Case 2 The game: Matching of verbs with suffixes

In the book a new tense, the present perfect tense comes to be the grammatical focus
from module 2 to module 4, and the tense actually is an important linguistic point in
the whole Grade 6 and even in the stage of junior school. In the knowledge, the
transformation of verbs past participles is one of the difficulties the students have. So
the teacher tries to focus on the past participles of the verbs, especially irregular ones
after English test.

The gaming process: before the game the teacher introduce distribution of the grades,
praises some students who did well in each part one the paper, and mentions the poor
performance of most of class. At that moment the whole class goes into the low mood,
which seems to prove the class consistent good performance in exams.
Sell Sold Grow -n

Show -n Forget -ten

Dream -ed/-t Feel felt

Grow -n Give -n

Cost cost Fly flown

Prefer -red Fall -en

Study -y+ied Speak spoken

Teach taught Take care -n

Pay paid Tell told

See -n Write -e+ten

Analysis of the case, there is no doubt that the teacher is understanding and
experienced to the student- he knew the students weakness in the vocabulary learning,
and pulled out them from the low mood that was brought about by the setback with a
teaching game, efficient tool of teaching vocabulary. Unfortunately and obviously the
teacher made a mistake that he ignored psychological features of the students who
were in a special stage and his students special mental characteristics gave a strong
impact on the teaching. Most of the students are from 11-12 years old and this period
is vital for them to develop sexual awareness. The desire of communicating with the
other is becoming stronger and stronger, but the teenagers are immature as they get on
with the other, and their acts have the following features: impetuousness, shyness and
contradictoriness. In the study students should not be misled at least but the teachers
words are stimuli to lead them into some undeterred associations which are irrelevant
or even harmful to English learning. Therefore a teaching unfriendly situation is
resulted in: the atmosphere for the teaching in the class is stressful, the theme of the
game is distorted and the function of the gaming is weaken.

Case 3 The game: Watching, showing and learning

For those students, the passive voice becomes one important knowledge item. Before
the class the meaning of the passive voice was systematically expounded to the
students, three tenses variations in passive voice was learned, and the most
importantly, as a key condition for acquiring the passive voice, categorizing of
transitive verbs and intransitive b=verbs was lectured clearly.

Game process: teacher gave students a review about the content of the last lesson.
Then, the teacher made the arrangement of the classes. And the teacher added that the
two classes would be spent to watch a cartoon film. In the students hurray, the teacher
assigned the work after watching the film.

The format for showing of each team

Team 1

Transitive verbs Intransitive verbs

Hate, say, prepare, mid, promise, reach, Happen, stand, shine, grow up, look
imagine, change, see

Analysis of the case, the case is kind of complicated , which consist of three parts;
watching the film to accumulate verbs, learning the verbs by students' guessing and
the teacher's explaining their meanings and by differentiating transitives and
intransitives, and lastly, practicing the passive voice with the transitive of then.
Although this teaching content took a bit long time, three periods the case is a success.
First of all, the whole teaching course is a complete system in which all the teaching
procedures are compactly and organically organized to aim at finishing the teaching
objective--to acquire the passive voice of these tense; secondly, in the process the
teacher adopted a charming teaching tool, a cartoon movie in interest and motivate the
learners; last but the most important, in the whole case, gaming is just a limited
element of the system which facilitates the application and acquisition of the
knowledge, here advanced strategies of vocabulary teaching, that is ,learning words
by watching a film and practicing the passive voice with the words are used.

I.S.P. Nation(2004)classified vocabulary learning into two types: direct learning that
includes playing game for vocabulary learning, and indirect learning where the
learners' attention is focused on some other feature, usually the message that is
conveyed by a speaker or writer. Krashen (1985)calls the former the input theory of
language learning.

"He believes that certain conditions must apply for such learning to occur. First, the
learner must be interested in understanding the massage. Second, the message should
contain some items that are just outside the learners' present level of achievement.
Third, the learners should not feel worried or threated by their contact with the foreign
language."

I.S.P.Nation also thinks that the two types of learning vocabulary should be both used
in vocabulary teaching, but opportunities for indirect vocabulary learning should
occupy much more time in a language-learning course than direct vocabulary learning
activities. The teacher in the case not only puts the students into a context which the
English film accords with the indirect way of vocabulary learning, while, with no
doubt the game becomes naturally an assisting element in the system rather other an
isolating tool to acquire only the spelling of the words

5.2 Limitation of the Study

The data of the research were collected mainly through observation in class, interview
and investigation with questionnaires after class. They were descriptive in nature.
Although they reveal some important characteristics of the teachers use of games in
vocabulary teaching, they cannot be used as evidence to determine how effective
these games were used to strengthen the students vocabulary knowledge.
Then, the cases in the thesis cannot represent the panorama of gaming application in
vocabulary teaching despite their typicality. And the case study focuses mainly on the
application of games to analyze the characteristics and problems. However, the
coverage on the effective use of games was almost not attempted, which is likely to
limit the pedagogical significance of this study.

Last, the research is made just in one school, which limits the representativeness of it,
and the duration of the research is just one term, namely 4 months or so, which seems
not to be sufficient to discover more complete and precise current situation of the
application of the game teaching in vocabulary teaching.

5.3 Suggestions for further Study

After the above researches, it is apparent that the application of vocabulary game in
primary school English is a complex system that conclude of lots of changing
elements, which are dominantly the construction of the game itself, the teacher
suggestion and organization in class and participation of students. Linked together
tightly, the three factors in the system interact subtly. In many case one factor is a
requirement of the good operation of the other two, and only several go as a positive
interaction, can the final goal of the game teaching in vocabulary teaching- making
the learners acquire and apply the vocabulary more efficiently and amused, be
fulfilled. The positive participation and feedback of the students is the purpose and
intention of gaming constructed by the teacher.

Furthermore, as English vocabulary is just a basic element of the language the

vocabulary teaching and learning is usually integrated into the whole of language
teaching approaches, but never isolated in the language teaching, which means, just as
shown in the last case, it is hard to distinguish the game teaching for teaching
vocabulary from other approaches aiming at developing the students listening,
speaking of English. Therefore, the integration of the game teaching for vocabulary
and other aspects of the languages, such as sentences, which is usually thought to be a
superordinate notion of vocabulary, is another possibility to further research.
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