Due to the significant role of games in English class especially in vocabulary teaching, a lot of interrelated practice and researches on the adoption of games in vocabulary teaching have begun to appear in both China and foreign countries since long time ago. However, there’re not enough researches that combine these two topics. And theories can not always be put into practice without imperfection. In real class, English teachers often encounter all kinds of restrictions and problems for which they are not always able to make full use of games when teaching. Therefore, what is going to be discussed in this paper is the application of games in vocabulary teaching in primary school.

This paper describes the significance of applying a variety of games in English vocabulary teaching in primary school. It is widely acknowledgeable that vocabulary teaching is of great importance in primary English class and the application of games provides more than a little assistance to the traditional teaching methods. There are some theoretical foundations of this argument, such as the relation between motivation theory and language learning, the connection between games and Cooperation Language Teaching method the physical and psychological characteristics of primary school students and so on. There are mainly three research questions are in need of answers in the paper: Q1: what are the classifications and characteristics of English classroom games in primary school? Q2: what are the problems in English classroom games that have been mentioned in related researches? Q3: whether do the problems exist in real English classes? If yes, what are the solutions? 

Nevertheless, based on observation on the real English class, what could be easily found is that few teachers are always capable of applying games in vocabulary teaching appropriately on the basis of the requirements of teaching rules and other relevant theories. The objective conditions in different situations play an important role in the problems. 

To make a conclusion, this study could inspire researchers to discover more original and effective vocabulary teaching methods in primary school. Apart from this, the study might also make contributions to not only English teachers but also teachers of other subjects in primary school because they are also in face of childish but rapidly developing students.

1.2 The Structure of the Thesis

There are five parts in this thesis. The first part is introduction, which briefly introduces the background of the research and contains the necessity and the significance of this research as well as the layout of the thesis. 

    The next part is literature review of applying games to teach vocabulary in English class in primary school, which includes the theoretical basis of the research, the definition, the characteristics and classification of games, as well as the current situation, the types and the features of vocabulary teaching.

    The third part that follows is the description of English class in Hangzhou Greentown Primary School. It’s also one of the most crucial parts to the research’s success. It consists of the analysis of the teaching materials, the teaching procedure and the explanation of the application of games in class with the help of the observation of the class, the interviews with the teachers and the questionnaire of the students.

    The fourth part is also of great importance because it discusses the application of games in English vocabulary teaching in Greentown Primary School based on the former part. The problems and the suggestions will be discussed. 

    Finally, all of what is mentioned above will be made into a conclusion and there comes the result of the thesis.