The importance of games in teaching foreign languages to children

Melek ALPAR

Abstract

In teaching French as a foreign language, there is a constant development from traditional methods to action-oriented approaches. This development has arisen as a result of students’ needs and of innovations in technology. Particularly in the last decade, there has been increasing interest in teaching foreign languages to children. Because of this increasing interest, much is expected from teachers in particular. The educators who will teach a foreign language to children should be trained with a system that children learn languages in a way physically and mentally different than adults do. In this study, it was emphasized that French as a foreign language should be taught to children using games, which are classroom activities. A field study in teaching foreign languages was conducted with first-year students who were in their secondary stage of primary education, aged from 10 to 11 and learning A1 level French.