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USING GAMES IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM
Umarkhanova Nigora
The Student of Namangan State University, English Philology Faculty, Philology and Language Teaching
Department. (Uzbekistan) Fotima Nuriddinova
Senior teacher of Namangan Engineering and Construction institute, Foreign language department (Uzbekistan)
ABSTRACT
The research of article is emphasizing the importance of game. Because they help create friendly atmosphere, provide students with practice in fluency, increases confidence. We have so many games for EFL classroom, but not all of them are useful. Games should not be played only for fun. Games should help involve students and teach how to use language. Here we explained some criteria for games and classified into groups.
Key words: game, classroom, students, atmosphere, create, activity, engage, involve.
Children have an enormous capacity for finding and making fun. Sometimes, it is has to be said, they choose the most inconvenient moments to indulge it! They bring a spark of individuality and of drama to much they do. Children delight in imagination and fantasy. It is more than simply a matter of enjoyment, however. In the primary school, children are very busing making sense of the world about them. They are identifying pattern and also deviation from that pattern. They test out their version of the world through fantasy and confirm how the world actually is by imagining how it might be different. In the language classroom this capacity for fantasy and imagination has very constructive part to play.
Language teaching should be concerned with real life. But it would be a great pity if we were so concerned to promote reality in the classroom that we forgot that reality for children includes imagination and fantasy. The act of fantasizing, of imagining, is very much an authentic part of being a child (Halliwell). Games are fun activities that promote interaction, thinking, learning and problem solving strategies. Often games have an aspect that permits the players to reduce information in a short time period. Some games require the players to engage in a physical activity and complete a mental challenge. Games allow for creativity, independence and higher order thinking. Usually, questions posed by the classroom teacher are fact based
and have only one answer, not allowing for creativity, personal expression, or testing hypotheses. The answer is either right or wrong, but games can allow for multiple answers. They improve participation, self-esteem, and vocabulary usage and allow the learners to see that there are many ways to solve the same problem. Additionally, it is more like real life. For instance, most conversations start with open ended questions: "How are you?", "What did you do yesterday?", " How can I help you", and "What would you like for dinner?" As foreign language learners, it is important that they are provided with scenarios that are as realistic as possible. Games, if produced well, can do the same thing. Easy ways to do that involve the students finishing a sentence, listing words that begin with a certain letter, answering open ended questions on a board game or telling a story (Talak-Kiryk 2010).
There are a number of reasons that games deserve a place in the language classroom. First of all, they are fun, which is extremely important, because they can help activate students who may have been inactive before, due to lack of interest. Keeping students active is vital because teachers will never be able actually teach students anything unless they can get them to participate in their own learning process.
Second, games also play a big role in helping participants build relationship, and to feel equal. Playing games in the classroom can also help create a friendly
and positive atmosphere where seat arrangement can differ from games, and thus cause diversity from the norm which can be extremely helpful in keeping an exciting learning environment.
Third, the reason most people want to learn a language is to be able to use it in real situation, for example when travelling. Games can be very good way to practice this skill because they can easily be used to reenact various situations from real life and provide students with practice in their fluency. Also, by using games in the classroom the teacher is giving his students a bigger role, and he himself is stepping out of the frontline which is a positive thing because it allows students to take on more responsibility. Also that allows students to do more on their own, and that can very well result in an increase in their confidence level (Langran & Pur-cell 1994).
Fourth, language students need to be exposed to the language in a variety of situations, which is a need games can fulfill. Language students also need to be ready to take on the experience, keeping their minds open and being willing participants again, games make this possible.
Fifth, language students need to be emotionally involved, meaning they need to feel something while they are exposed to the language. Strong emotions, such as happiness, excitement, amusement and suspense allow students to feel positively about their learning situation and are therefore likely to have a positive effect on language learning.
Sixth, games are good for shy students and students with low confidence, and that applies specifically when playing takes place in smaller groups because then they get a chance to speak in front of fewer audience instead of having to express themselves in front of the whole class. Also it is sometimes easier to open up and forget the shyness when playing a game because the atmosphere is not as serious and more emphasis is put on fluency rather than grammatical correctness (Langran & Purcell 1994).
Seventh, games can be a good strategy when teaching various subjects because they are very likely to spark interest amongst students. They can be used with students of all ages, and when they are used with other teaching methods they create diversity which is ideal for school work (Ingvar Sigurgeirsson 1999). A study that was undertaken in Iceland in 2006 shows clearly the need for diversity in school. Many participants in that study complained about the lack of diversity, and that they wanted more of it in order for their learning to become more fun and progressive in their school (Lovisa, Laufey & Samuel 2006).
Finally, using games in the classroom is important because many children do not get enough opportunity to play during their free time, which can be traced to the rapid changes in our society (Sigridur2010).
Language games are not activities mainly aimed to break the ice between students or to kill time. Byrne (1995) gave the definition to games as a form of playing governed by rules. They should be enjoyed and fun. They are not just a diversion, a break from routine activities, but a way of getting the learner to use the lan-
guage in the course of the games. Similarly, Jill Had-field (1990) defined games "an activity with rules, a goal and an element of fun". The main reason why games are often used in language classes is that they lower students' stress in the classroom. In conventional classrooms, there is a lot of stress put on students trying to master the target language. Schultz (1988) said that "...Stress is a major hindrance in language learning proves. This process (learning language in traditional way) is by its nature time consuming and stress provoking... raise the stress level to a point at which it interferes with students attention and efficient and undermines motivation. ... One method has been developed to make students forget that they are in class... relax students by engaging them in stress-reducing task (games) ". There is a high level of stress in the classroom because students have to face unfamiliar or unknown grammatical structures, words, texts and so forth. Therefore students often feel uncomfortable and insecure in class, which inevitably affects their ability to learn. As a result, games can help lower their anxiety, make them feel comfortable, and want to learn more. It is believed that when students play games, they relax and have fun. Teachers need to consider which games to use, when to use them, how to link them up with the syllabus, text book or programmed, and how, more specifically, different games will benefit students in different ways. The key to successful language game is that the rules are clear, the ultimate goal is well defined and the game must be fun (Mania Maoyad 2012).
Games that are used in teaching can be divided into categories in many different ways. One way of dividing educational games is by categorizing them into groups depending on their model. Ingvar Sigurgeirsson (1996) has divided games into the following categories: games for dividing larger groups into smaller groups, introduction-games, group games, physical games, scavenger hunt games, educational games, theoretical expression games, drawing-and coloring games, educational card games, word games, story games and question games.
1. Games for dividing larger groups into smaller groups. Within the group: games for dividing larger group into smaller groups, there are games that can be used prior to some group activity in order to divide the whole group into smaller group. A great game that fits into this category is the game " Group dividing by miming" and it goes like this: the teacher has prepared notes with a certain role written on them. If the teacher wants to have 4 students in a group he has made 4 notes of each role, for example 4 notes that say "teacher" or "clown". The second step is to give each student a note and remember to tell the students that they have to make sure that nobody besides them sees their note. Once everybody has gotten a note then they can begin acting out their roles and while they are doing so they must watch the others in order to figure out who is acting the same role as them. once they have figured that out they will have created their groups ( Ingvar Sigur-geirsson 1995). An activity like this can also be very good because it "breaks the ice" and prepared the students for the group work.
2. Introduction games. This category might include games like: "Searching for people" where students have to walk around the classroom and find students that have for example lived on a farm, been to Spain or eaten Mexican food and of course they would have to use the target language in order to get the necessary information. Also a good game in this category is the game "Starting the names" where students sit in a circle and one by one they introduce themselves, but the only catch is that before saying their own name they always have to repeat the names of the students who have already introduced themselves, and as the game progresses it gets harder and harder for students to memorize all the names (Ingvar Sigurgeirson 1995). In order to make this game more fitting in a language classroom the teacher could ask the student to add something they like that starts with the same letter as their names, for example "my name is Anna and I love apples". Another idea could be to have students add adjectives with the name letter as their names, for example "Sigga super" or "Anna awesome" and that way it teacher adjectives as well.
3. Group games. An example of a group game is the game "Fruit basket" which emphasizes listening, memory and reflexes, all of which are good and necessary skills to possess. The rules of this game are that participants sit in a circle and they all get a name of a certain fruit to "be". One participant doesn't have a chair and has to stand in the middle. He then calls out a name of a fruit, for example an orange, and then all the students who are oranges have to stand up and switch seats. The one in the middle has to try and "steal" a seat while the others are switching and if he succeeds someone else will be left alone in the middle and gets the task of calling out the name of a new fruit (Ingvar Sigurgeirson 1995). This game could easily be augmented to suit different or to train some other vocabulary just by using other categories of words, for example clothes, names of relatives, or different types of food instead of fruits.
4. Physical games. An example of a physical games is "Walking the line" where participants have to walk a line and perform various types of tasks at the same time, for example walking backwards, or balancing a book on their heads. In order to make this game more fitting in a language classroom the teacher should give the instructions in the target language, for example "everybody has to walk backwards". Another example of a physical game could be the games "Simon says", where someone plays Simon and gives the others orders, for example "Simon says jump" or "Simon says clap your hands". I categorize this game as a physical game because of the fact that the Simon's orders are usually physical. Activities like "Simon says" fits into a teaching method called Total Physical Response in which languages is taught by allowing students to observe and take their time to understand the language before having to speak it. TPR is taught to be a good teaching method for learning a foreign language for two reasons. The first one is that it is thought to reduce the stress level. Stress level of learning a language and therefore making the learning more enjoyable, and the second one is that it resembles the learning of children's
native language, where children are exposed to the language for many months before starting to talk (Freeman 2000).
5. Scavenger hunt games. Savage hunt games are especially fitting in the language classroom because the clue can be written in the target language, which forces the participants to read and fellow team members to listen and test their understanding. Also within the scavenger hunt could be puzzles, which the students would have to solve, such as crossword puzzles, word searches and questions. The possibilities are almost endless and teachers are only bound by the limits of their own creativity.
6. Educational games. The "mail game" where participants have to deliver "mail" and make sure it gets to the right places works as an excellent example of an educational game. For languages a good idea would be to work around a theme of a certain place, such as the home. The first thing the teacher has to do is to make the envelopes and the "mail". The envelopes should be labeled with a specific genre, which in this example would be "kitchen", "bedroom", "bathroom" etc. The mail should then be letters with words on them the fit into specific envelopes, for example the word "knife" or the word "refrigerator" would match the envelope labeled "kitchen". Each student should then get a certain amount of "mail" that he has to write his name on and then got to work delivering. The first one to deliver all of his mail would win if it turned out he delivered correctly.
7. Theoretical expression games. The game "who am I" fits perfectly into the theoretical expression category. In this game the class is usually divided into two teams and then one by one students stand in front of the whole class and act out a specific profession, which the teacher has given them. the teams take turns in guessing or asking questions, but the actor can only reply to questions by answering yes or no. The scoring can then be managed in a way that one point would be given to a team that asks a question, which is replayed with a yes answer and 5 points would be given to the team that figures out who the actor is playing (Ingvar Sigurgeirson 1995).
8. Drawing and coloring games. An example of a game from the category: drawing-and coloring games can be a game called "drawing in a foreign language". That game is very similar to the "who am I" game from the category above but the only differences is that the students have to draw on the blackboard instead of acting, and they could be working with other types of vocabulary than professions, for example nouns, verbs or adjectives.(Sunna Vidarsdottir)
9. Educational card games. One educational card game is Bingo (Ingvar Sigurgeirsson 1995) which is an excellent activity to use in language teaching because the teacher can draw words and the students only have pictures on their bingo cards or vice versa. That way the students have to understand the words to be able to match it to the right picture.
10. Word games. Word games can be especially good for language teaching. Included here are crossword puzzles and word searches where students get the
words in their native tongue but they are hidden in the word search and only match the crossword puzzle in the target language. Also it is easy asking students to use the target language in the game "Filling in a chart" where participants have to find, for example a country, a city, an animal, or a type of food (Ingvar Sigur-geirsson 1995).
11. Story games. An excellent example of a game from the category: story games, is the game "to tell a story". The participants sit in a circle and one them gets the role of the story teller. The teacher whispers one word into the ear of each student and ask him or her to remember it. Then the storyteller begins telling a story and every now and then he stops and points at a students who then has to say the word the teacher has whispered to him. The storyteller then has to incorporate this word into the story, and that usually has amusing consequences (Ingvar Sigurgeirsson 1995). This game fits into language teaching perfectly because the story would be told in the target language and the words would also be in the target language.
12. Question games. A good game in the category: question games, is the game "riddles about European countries". The student get divided into pairs and each pair gets assigned a specific country and the task of preparing a small riddle about it, such as
"It has many horses
It is surrounded by sea,
And there you cannot travel by train" (answer: Iceland)
After each pair has made their riddle they would be asked to come to the front of the class and ask the other pairs to solve the riddle. The other pairs then have to write down what they think the right answer is and when all pairs have asked their riddles all the answers are collected and the pair with the most correct answers wins (Ingvar Sigurgeirsson 1995).
In research paper done by Mei and Yu-Jing they said that Games are fun and children like them. Through games children experiment, discover, and interact with their environment. Through playing games, students can learn English the way children learn their mother tongue without being aware they are studying; thus without stress, they can learn a lot even shy students can participate positively. They point how to choose a game.
• A game must be more than just a fun.
• A game should involve "friendly" competition.
• A game should keep all of the students involved and interested.
• A game should encourage students to focus on the use of language rather than on the language itself.
• A game should give students a chance to learn, practice, or review specific language material.
Students may wish to play games purely for fun. Teachers, however, need more convincing reasons. Teachers need to consider which games to use, when to use them, how to link them up with the syllabus, text book or programmed, and how, more specific, different games will benefit students in different ways. The key to a successful language game is that the rules are clear, the ultimate goal is well defined and the game must be fun (Mania Moayad 2012).
Foreign language teaching methods are improving rapidly. Teacher centered teaching methods are not being used. So games are best way to engage students in the lesson. Games help students create real English atmosphere. If teacher chooses games in right purpose and time, he or she gets successes in teaching.
REFERENCES
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