Grammar Games - Motivation in Teaching English

She has six children. She took aspirin. Air pollution in California is increasing.

I had to go to work. The bus was late.

Don't eat too much for lunch. My sister doesn't work outside the house.

My in-laws are coming for a visit. I was late for work.

It's impossible to see out the front window. She has a migraine headache.

More and more people are driving alone. She wants to get into a good university.

We are going to a great restaurant for dinner.

You should wash your car.

It's been raining all day. I ate breakfast at 7:00 A.M.

I spent the day cleaning the house.

iii. Conclusion

In the present qualification work we attempted to investigate the problem of game using at English language lessons, one of the main problems in theory of English grammar teaching. We chose the theme of our qualification work because we interested in it. We used different kind of references to investigate the role of games in teaching English.

Recently, using games has become a popular technique exercised by many educators in the classrooms and recommended by methodologists. Many sources, including the ones quoted in this work, list the advantages of the use of games in foreign language classrooms. Yet, nowhere have I found any empirical evidence for their usefulness in vocabulary presentation and consolidation.

Though the main objectives of the games were to acquaint students with new words or phrases and help them consolidate lexical items, they also helped develop the students' communicative competence.

From the observations, I noticed that those groups of students who practiced grammar activity with games felt more motivated and interested in what they were doing. However, the time they spent working on the words was usually slightly longer than when other techniques were used with different groups. This may suggest that more time devoted to activities leads to better results. The marks students received suggested that the fun and relaxed atmosphere accompanying the activities facilitated students' learning. But this is not the only possible explanation of such an outcome. The use of games during the lessons might have motivated students to work more on the vocabulary items on their own, so the game might have only been a good stimulus for extra work.

Although, it cannot be said that games are always better and easier to cope with for everyone, an overwhelming majority of pupils find games relaxing and motivating. Games should be an integral part of a lesson, providing the possibility of intensive practice while at the same time immensely enjoyable for both students and teachers. My research has produced some evidence which shows that games are useful and more successful than other methods of vocabulary presentation and revision. Having such evidence at hand, I wish to recommend the wide use of games with vocabulary work as a successful way of acquiring language competence.

The present material can be used at the lessons of grammar, practical course of English language, lexicology, and speech practice in both: universities and English classes at schools. This paper can help to create the teaching aids, textbooks, etc. Teachers and students might use the results of the present work for the further investigations.

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