There are many good ideas about English teaching. Among these, using games in the English class is the one which 
is most easily accepted by students and which is also a very useful and helpful aspect of communicative method. As is 
known to everyone, game is an activity providing entertainment or amusement; it‟s a competitive activity or sport in 
which players contend with each other according to a set of rules. “A game is an activity carried out by co-operating or 
competing decision-makers, seeking to achieve, within a set of rules, their objectives” (Rixon 1981). A game is an 
activity that both the teacher and students enjoy doing. It is student-centered and as appealing as playing in the 
playground.
Using games in English class can get students relaxed and enjoying using the language. It may be argued that college 
students, unlike children, having grown up, do not need games to relax themselves. On the contrary, adults sometimes 
feel more nervous than children when they face new things, and they are more afraid of losing their face as the sense of 
face develops with their age. In this sense, they do need games or any other activity that help them relaxed and innocent 
like children to the new language without being afraid of making mistakes. According Stephen Krashen (1982), second 
language acquisition is influenced by affective factors either positively or negatively. One of the teacher‟s tasks is to 
create a situation where students‟ affective filter is lowered so that the comprehensible input could be taken in. The first 
aim of using games in class is just to create such a situation.
Games are communicative in essence, and so using game in English teaching and learning can well realize the 
fundamental idea of the communicative language teaching approach. Using games is a good way to improve students' 
various skills, as Wright, Betteridge and Buckby (2006) say, "Games can be found to give practice in all the skills, in all 
the stages of the teaching and learning and for many types of communication". In playing language games, students 
have to know and well understand the rules of the games, and should be clear about what has been, is being and will be 
done or said, and what is more important, they have to take some actions – doing or saying something, to compete in the 
games. In so doing, they can practise their skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing comprehensively, and 
especially they get more practice in listening and speaking, which are poor in the traditional teaching method. 
Littlewood (1981) proposed that through games, teachers should help learners go beyond the mastery of structures, to 
the point where they can use them to communicate meaning in real situations.
Game playing is effective in developing students‟ communicative ability in that it is a dynamic process of 
communication in which students as thinking beings, emotional beings and communicators instead of knowledge 
receptacles, try to get their ideas, concepts, thoughts, emotions and feelings expressed, based on their own life 
experiences. Psychologist Piaget (2001) proposes that movement produces “thought”. He believes that movement is the 
beginning of learning, and that cognitive frame is built up step by step whose joint is the movement but not the 
consciousness.
In addition, games may help and encourage many learners to support their interest and work (Wright 2006). Games 
can increase motivation to learn the language as students, especially the weaker ones, feel a real sense of achievement 
when they manipulate a game (Hubbard 1987). Games can provide quite extensive knowledge input. Games can 
increase students' communication and co-operation with each other. And games can act as a testing mechanism through 
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which they will expose areas of weakness and the need for remedial work.
Furthermore, games can be used at any stage in a lesson: at the beginning to diagnose what the students can or cannot 
do; during the lesson for language practice purposes; or at the end as reinforcement and „reward‟. Students playing 
language games are encouraged to express their ideas for certain purpose, and they can use different types of games at 
different stages appropriate for different types of language learning. metninin çevir