CC BY
30Central Asian Research Journal For Interdisciplinary Studies (CARJIS)
ISSN (online): 2181-2454 Volume 2 | Issue 5 | May, 2022 | SJIF: 5,965 | UIF: 7,6 | ISRA: JIF 1.947 | Google Scholar |
www.carjis.org DOI: 10.24412/2181-2454-2022-5-361-366
GRAMMAR GAMES IN TEACHING ENGLISH
Umida Islomovna Almatova
Jizzakh State Pedagogical Institute.
Saida Zufar qizi Erkinova
Student of Jizzakh State Pedagogical Institute Faculty of Foreign Languages Saidaerkinova0 107@gmail .com
ABSTRACT
The article presents the pedagogical experience of the formation of the grammar skills of students. The most natural for elementary school students are game moments of activity, direct communication with adults and objective visualization.
Key words: games, teaching, grammar, working, children, with, method.
INTRODUCTION
Grammar is one of the most important aspects in the study of any language since without grammar knowledge there can be no talk of full-fledged communication. The vocabulary itself is not a language - it only serves as a building material. Vocabulary becomes an effective tool when it comes to the disposal of grammar. That is why it is so important to teach children grammar from the very beginning of language learning. However, working with children, mainly of primary school age, it became clear to me that loading students with rules, diagrams and a huge number of training exercises were useless.
METHODOLOGY
There is a question: why should we teach and learn grammar with games?
It's the rare gem of a teacher who can make a grammar lecture interesting, but with limited class time, it's more important to get your students speaking! They can read grammar explanations at home and you can spot check to ensure that they have learned the basics—old-school grammar drills still do have a purpose! Then you can move on to grammar games to reinforce what they have learned.
Ever thought of giving your students language data, sitting back and watching them try to figure the rules out for themselves? Don't! Not all students want to be
Central Asian Research Journal For Interdisciplinary Studies (CARJIS)
ISSN (online): 2181-2454
Volume 2 | Issue 5 | May, 2022 | SJIF: 5,965 | UIF: 7,6 | ISRA: JIF 1.947 | Google Scholar |
www.carjis.org DOI: 10.24412/2181-2454-2022-5-361-366
linguists, so why spend valuable class time on such an activity when you can get your students speaking at the outset? Do something tried and true: playing grammar games is a great way to getting your students to speak!
Grammar outside of context is difficult to remember and hard to master. By designing games where students are able to utilize what they have learned, they establish linguistic patterns for later use.
Just as teachers have their own styles, students have their own preferred learning style and know which is most effective for them. Grammar games provide a variety of input types, auditory, visual, total physical response to name but three, that allow students to learn in a style most effective for them.
Thinking creatively is thinking critically. Grammar games give students the opportunity to be creative. They will start testing their limits, playing with words, negotiating meanings, plotting strategy—all the skills that they will need to use in the real world when they're using the language or listening to it in real media.
Mastering these skills in a foreign language helps students work in their first language.
When students are being drilled in class, they are sometimes self-conscious about speaking and making mistakes. When playing a grammar game, students get so wrapped up in the moment that this self-consciousness goes away. They speak more freely. You listen and assess what they truly understand and are able to use.
DISCUSSION
Children simply lose interest not only in the study of grammar but also in the language as a whole. Therefore, it is important to choose a bright, unusual and exciting method of studying grammar. One of these methods, of course, are grammar games. The game is a traditional, recognized method of training and education. Game activity in the English lesson not only organizes the process of communication in a foreign language but also brings it as close as possible to natural communication. The game develops mental and volitional activity. Thanks to games, all cognitive processes of students are activated: attention, memory, thinking, and creative abilities develop. Educational games help relieve fatigue, overcome language and psychological barriers. Their use always gives good results, increases interest in the subject, and allows you to focus on the main thing - mastering speech skills in the process of a natural communication situation during the game. Games are an active way to achieve many educational goals: consolidate the material just passed; the
Central Asian Research Journal For Interdisciplinary Studies (CARJIS)
ISSN (online): 2181-2454 Volume 2 | Issue 5 | May, 2022 | SJIF: 5,965 | UIF: 7,6 | ISRA: JIF 1.947 | Google Scholar |
www.carjis.org DOI: 10.24412/2181-2454-2022-5-361-366
game is a very good decision to repeat the past; the game is an excellent way to encourage students to work actively in the classroom when they have to do less pleasant things; a game is a technique for changing activities after a difficult oral exercise or another tedious exercise; the game is an ideal opportunity to relax; Games help to remove stiffness, especially if you exclude an element of competition from them or minimize it. Depending on the goals and objectives of the lesson, various games can be used, but since I chose to use grammar games as the topic of my methodological work, I will give a few examples of similar games that I use in my practice.
Grammar game No. 1 (for practising the construction of sentences): Each student has his card with a pronoun, verb, time companion, auxiliary verb, etc., depending on what time or grammatical structure is practised. One participant may have several cards. At the command of the teacher, the student should build into a sentence without confusing the word order and meaning.
The second version of the game: One of the students is given a Russian sentence on the card, which he must translate and build the other students in the right order.
Grammar game No. 2 "Alterations": Students are given several sentences and the task of redoing this sentence, for example, removing only one word, adding an ending or swapping words. The game demonstrates how well the child knows the rules for constructing sentences at different times and knows how to compare these times with each other. Examples: Redo the sentence by removing one word. I will swim in the river. ("Remake": I swim in the river). Redo the sentence by removing the word and swapping words. He does not like milk. ("Redoing": Does he like milk?), Etc.
Grammar game No. 3 (for working out general questions in the Simple present tense): The game can take place in the form of competition. Card(s) with suggestions on the board (subject may vary) For instance: My favourite color is red My favourite color is green My favourite color is blue My favourite color is white My favourite color is black My favourite color is yellow
Central Asian Research Journal For Interdisciplinary Studies (CARJIS)
ISSN (online): 2181-2454
Volume 2 | Issue 5 | May, 2022 | SJIF: 5,965 | UIF: 7,6 | ISRA: JIF 1.947 | Google Scholar |
www.carjis.org DOI: 10.24412/2181-2454-2022-5-361-366
My favourite color is pink
One of the students makes one of the suggestions. The rest should guess the offer by asking general questions. For instance: Is your favourite colour red? (Yes, it is / No, it is not). The one who guessed gets one point or a token, and now it's his turn to guess. Sentences may also be of type I like ... most of all. In this case, you can work out the questions with the verb helper do.
Grammar game No. 4 (to work out constructions there is/there are either have/has in interrogative sentences + repetition of the studied vocabulary on the topic). The game is played in pairs. Everyone writes 5 words in a notebook on the topic that students are currently studying. Lists guys do not show each other. Their task is to guess what is written on the sheet of the opponent faster than they guess their items, asking general questions.
Grammar game No. 5 There was a wonderful British comedic game show, later brought to America by Drew Carey, called "Whose Line Is It Anyway?"
One of the games they played, for which the entire show was named, was to take random sentences written by members of the audience, give them to the teams of contestants, read the sentence at a random moment and then improvise the rest from there.
We can redesign this activity for the foreign language classroom.
Let's say you're toward the end of the chapter about food. Ideally, you will want your students to create dialogues indicative of real-life situations using the vocabulary and structures they have learned in that chapter. The content of these dialogues ends up being fairly predictable, so let's add a twist.
For example, one line could be, "I want to go to the circus," which should be used after the other student has asked: "Where do you want to go?" in the situation of deciding where to go to eat. Both students will be momentarily shocked by that statement, but after they recover, one will have to ask "Why?" and the other will have to try to explain how the circus relates to getting food to eat. Maybe they love the hot dogs at the circus!
One or two given lines for each student will be enough for this game, and it requires the teacher to be both very creative and to pay very close attention to what is going on. The payoff will be amazing: You don't know where the students will go with their dialogues after they use the sentences or questions you give them, so this will be a truly spontaneous and creative activity!
Students will be required to think on their feet and change course midstream in
Central Asian Research Journal For Interdisciplinary Studies (CARJIS)
ISSN (online): 2181-2454
Volume 2 | Issue 5 | May, 2022 | SJIF: 5,965 | UIF: 7,6 | ISRA: JIF 1.947 | Google Scholar |
www.carjis.org DOI: 10.24412/2181-2454-2022-5-361-366
their dialogues. There will be some laughter, some mistakes and perhaps some embarrassment over them, but in the course of a purposely-designed silly situation, all that won't matter. What will matter is that they have played with the language, understood the language and used the grammar naturally, often without realizing it. That's the hallmark of a well-designed grammar game.
Grammar game No. 6 Remember all that information you gathered from your students the first day of class? You asked them their hometown, other languages they know, places they have lived and traveled, likes and dislikes. Why not turn this information into a grammar game that will also let them get to know each other?
Use the information to write up about 20 implied questions in English. For example:
Find someone who speaks Italian.
Find someone who has lived in Indiana.
Find someone who likes pizza.
Make sure you write questions they are able to form in the language you are teaching. Of course you should also ensure that there is someone in class who meets the criteria of the question. Just for fun, you can toss in a couple about yourself so the students are encouraged to engage you as well.
The game consists of two steps: First, each student asks in the target language a maximum of 2 or 3 questions of another student, depending on class size, before moving on to the next student. The student must answer in a complete sentence. Second, gather the class together, having a student ask "Who speaks Italian?" and letting another student answer this question, again in a complete sentence.
By the end of the activity, for those languages that have inflected verb forms, you have practiced three or four (of generally six) forms: I, you (singular/familiar and/or plural/polite), and who/he/she, maybe even they for those questions that have multiple answers:
In pairs: "Do you speak Italian?" "Yes, I speak Italian."
As a class: "Who speaks Italian?" "John speaks Italian." or "John and Mary speak Italian."
Students actively conjugate verbs in context in a way they will remember for future use.
Grammar game No.7 Students who take foreign languages might not be future professional linguists, but they do love to play with the language. You will find that they often love puzzles that allow them to do exactly this!
Central Asian Research Journal For Interdisciplinary Studies (CARJIS)
ISSN (online): 2181-2454 Volume 2 | Issue 5 | May, 2022 | SJIF: 5,965 | UIF: 7,6 | ISRA: JIF 1.947 | Google Scholar |
www.carjis.org DOI: 10.24412/2181-2454-2022-5-361-366
You can give them this opportunity through a traditional word scramble, again with a twist.
Write a sentence, break down the words into their basic forms, cut the words apart, give piles of words to each group of students and let them form a sentence out of them.
CONCLUSION
For a heavily inflected language, such as Russian or German, give all nouns and adjectives in their nominative form and all verbs in their infinitive form. This way you have a more complex game, where students not only have to manage the semantics of the words you give them but also determine the correct grammatical form(s) as they piece their sentence back together. You can specify whether the verbs should be in the present, past or future tense, but even better: Insert an adverb that clues the students in to the tense.
In this way, they have to take dictionary forms and make complete sentences, using all of their combined knowledge. It is the very essence of thinking critically.
REFERENCES
1. Lee, W.R. (1991). Language Teaching: Games and Contests. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2. Luu, T.T & Nguyen, T.M.D. (2010). Teaching English grammar through games
3. Nguyen, L.H. (2005). How to Teach Grammar Communicatively.
4. https://www.fluentu.com/blog/educator/grammar-games-for-the-classroom/
