THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE: Why and how I use games in my English lessons

Nastja Müller Primary School Hinka Smrekarja, Ljubljana, Slovenia nastja.muller@guest.arnes.si

Abstract

Living in a time of globalisation, knowing foreign languages has become a priority not just for people eager to travel around the globe but also for seekers of employment. Learning a foreign language is hard work, especially for adults, but there are ways to make this quite long process fun and enjoyable. Almost everyone enjoys playing games because there is no “obvious” learning or revision involved. The atmosphere in the classroom is more relaxed, the students are eager to participate and even win. This is why I use every opportunity I can to implement different types of games into my lessons. But the process of choosing the right game, implementing it into the lesson plan and executing it in the classroom is quite challenging for the teacher. In this article I will discuss the obvious benefits of playing games in a foreign language class. I will also write about how I choose a certain game for students and which criteria I try to follow. A very important aspect of playing games in classroom is also the language of the teacher because it is rich in its potential for learning. There is a vast amount of literature connected to different types of games but I will only focus on the ones that I regularly use in my classroom.