Importance Of Games In Education

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Educational games, as the name suggests, are games that are used by many educators to facilitate the learning process. Random House Dictionary defines it as “A competitive activity involving skill, chance or endurance played according to rules” (El-Shamy 2001: 7). El-Shamy further adds that these games are not just designed for fun but they serve a hidden purpose also (ibid: 7). Games have been quite popular since Egyptian times and some of the ancient tombs and temples still have pictures of people playing different types of games. While wooden game boards were frequently used in Africa and India, North American tribes used them during some religious rituals or ceremonies. In Europe, however, most of the games were linked to developing flexibility…show more content…
He was the founder of the concept of “Kindergarten” (Herford 1896: xv) and he insisted that teaching young learners can be facilitated by the introduction of some educational toys (Herford 1896: xv) which later became to be known as “Froebel gifts”. These toys were very simple and consisted of a sewing kit, wooden blocks, some clay material or some weaving material. Besides creating a relaxed environment, these games also served a purpose and created a relaxed learning environment (Huizinga 1949: 2). By the development of Piaget’s Cognitive theory (1936) and further theory on “Multiple Intelligences” by Gardner (1991), these educational games have found a significant place in pedagogy. Educators all over the world either use traditional games or online video games to enhance personal characteristics of learners by making some of dullest facts look more interesting. Understanding the rules and concept of the games also encourages the cognitive development of learners. Some games even teach learners the real-life skills which they will find useful later in their lives. The author further wants to clarify that terms “Game”, “Play” and “Simulations” are interchangeable and educators quite often use any of these terms to refer to one single entity and that is “Game”. 1.1 Purpose of the Educational Games The purpose of the educational games is to attain…show more content…
Understand the concept so that it is available for other purposes. (Gredler 1994: 572) The following subchapters are an attempt to elaborate these purposes. 1.1.1 Practising Acquired Skills Many students, especially young learners, suffer from considerable difficulties in retaining previously encountered words and start to forget them shortly after the lesson. As their cognitive skills are not well developed so this rate of forgetting keeps increasing if the word is not recycled many times and is not transferred to the long-term memory part of their brain (Gredler 1994: 572). Many linguistic experts including Nation believe in the constant drilling of the vocabulary items (Nation 2001: 114). Besides vocabulary, many other lexical skills like grammar or pronunciation have to be conceptualized many times using different methods so that these items are available for their genuine use. Games can be utilized to serve different purpose, for example, Hangman can be used to enhance pronunciation skills, Make a Story can be used for lexical cohesion, Word Race can be used for vocabulary recycling. 1.1.2 Finding Missing
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