The effects of game teaching to enhance English speaking skills of students at an inner Mongolia primary school in China

Abstract

The purposes of this research were 1) to study the effects of games in enhancing the English speaking skills of students at a primary school in Inner Mongolia, China, and 2) to investigate students’ satisfaction towards game-based instruction. This experimental quantitative research comprised 80 students from two Grade 3 primary classes. Both classes had 40 students each with the same level of English speaking skills. One class was the experimental group, and the other was the control group. The experimental group was treated with game-based instruction while the control one was treated with traditional teaching methods. A pre-test and a post-test were used to discover the learning outcomes of both groups. In order to find out their satisfaction towards game-based instruction, a questionnaire was given to the experimental group after the experiment. The findings showed that the post-test mean scores of the experimental group and the control group were 88.68 and 84.18, respectively, revealing that game-based instruction was more effective than traditional teaching methods in enhancing English speaking skills. Finally, students’ satisfaction towards game-based instruction was at a ‘Very satisfied’ level (4.67/5.00).