How to Help Language Learners with Games?

By playing different kinds of games language learners pick upwordsspontaneously and can use language as a tool. Students learn more effectively whentheyare motivated and involved. They need activities, which are inspiring and exciting. English is the language of business, technology, sport and aviation. In this thesis I willexamine how language games can help perceptiveness, inventiveness and creativity. I will prove that the main characteristics of children aged 11-12 make it possible for them to acquire a foreign language by taking part in different games. There are differences between playful activities and games and knowing these differences helps the teacher find the proper type of the language games. I will demonstrate how the games can be prepared, pre-planned and arranged in the classroom and how the material can meet the general requirements of the curriculum in the 6th year of the primary school. I will describe some of the most promising language games by mentioning their most important characteristics. I will show how the teacher can set the aims of the activity and how games make everybody involved enthusiastic, and anxious about the end-results. The reader can also find examples of how the thinking processes, personal characteristics such as patience, self-confidence, friendship, empathy, endurance, and openness can be generated by games. A good game requires activity from the participants, and it is not over when it is finished: the memories of the rules, the results and the faults willstay with the children for a long time in the latter stages of their development. In the end I will analyse the student's responses to the questions concerning the importance of language games.