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As known, games are one of the most important parts in EFL classrooms especially for young learners. Games are used by many teachers not just for escape monotonous repetitions in the lesson but also as they encourage students to use the target language in a creative and communicative manner. Games generally used as warm-up activities or at the end of lesson. Games provide language teachers with many advantages when they are used in classroom. One of these advantages is that learners are motivated to learn the language when they are in a game. The second advantage is that games rid students’ anxiety towards language in one hand, and in other hand increase positive feelings. Also games improve self-confidence, because students are not afraid to make a mistake. Another advantage of games that they make learning meaningful. Games can be used in any language teaching situations and with all skill areas and for all leanerns from begginers to advanced. However, teachers should be careful about choosing games if they want to make them advantageous. Besides many advantages, there are some disadvantages for using games in the EFL classroom. First, discipline issues, learners may get extremely noisy and these noisy conditions make the teacher difficult to control the students. Second, if games familiar some students can getting boring and as result it will be difficult to involve evrybody in the equally. Third, preparing games can be time consuming for teachers. The fact that games are the most suitable activities for young learners is obvious, because they are a natural part of their life. That is why, I would like to dwell on this group of students in more detail. First of all, teaching young leaners requires special effort from the teacher. It is important that the game was chosen correctly. Teachers should consider while choosing a game is the fact that children learn best with games which require physical action, interaction, competition and participation. Games should be as short as possible because, young learners are able to pay their attention to the games just for a limited time. Also, game should include praise and encouragement because young learners always love to be the centre of attention. Before the game, it would be better to demonstrate instructions rather then use word of explanation, because it can help young leaners understand the rules clearly and easily. As example, I would like to explain my experience of using games with young leaners (age 4-5). Also, I will describe our favourite games.The most popular games are games with soft ball. We start with very simple game that calls ‘catch the ball’. There is not very educative but it allows teacher to see how children deal with the ball. After it we use ball games almost every lesson. The most popular game is ‘eadible-ineadible’. The rules are very simple: all players sit or stand in a row. The teacher is the lead and she/he throws a ball to one of the participants and at the same time calls out an object. If the object is edible, the player catches the ball. If not, he bounces it away. Ball is very useful with that kind of activities like ‘name three farm animals or three numbers’. İn our class we use games with balls mostly for training vocabulary. One of favourite game without ball is ‘play ten’. Chidren stay in a circle. Somebody starts from ‘one’, next participant says ‘two’. Who says ‘ten’ leave the circle. After that it starts again and repeat the same actions till last two children.This game not just allow learn how to count to ten, but also develop children’s attention. Of course, it is impossible avoid games with flashcards. With flashcards our favourite game is ‘cross the bog’. 16 or 20 (4-5 for one row) flashcards lay on the floor. Each card represents a stepping stones, as students must to say 1 name from each row to cross the bog. There are many other games that we play. Here were mentioned just some. İn conclusion, games are an important and necessary part of English language. Games are one of the best ways to direct young learners’ energy into language learning, because young learners like to be physically active. Therefore, teaching young learners requires a special effort and challenge by the teacher.
