Miss.Fang and I designed a five-in-a-row game in class this week to help the students recognize Chinese characters and review the vocabulary they have learned. We have selected 64 words and phrases that we have learned as a chessboard. The words are presented as Chinese characters without Chinese pinyin. The purpose of this design is to enable students to deepen their understanding of Chinese characters through their own searching. Before the game, Miss.Fang explained the rules of the game in Hungarian. The whole class was divided into two groups, and each group chose one person to decide who would play first by way of rock, paper, scissors. After deciding the order of playing five-in-a-row, the team members have about 10 minutes to discuss about how to play based on ensuring that they know the Chinese characters. After the discussion, we began to play five-in-a-row formally. Miss.Fang and I were in charge of a group alone. Students play five-in-a-row by saying Chinese pronunciation. if the first group of students say "hello", we draw a triangle on the words; if the second group of students say "thank you", we draw a circle on the words. The winner is the group which connect five consecutive words in a line first. Students in both classes played two rounds of the game and all of them were very interested in the game. We also found some problems during the game. For example, in the group discussion, some students are too introverted to participate in the discussion; in the formal game, some students focused on the strategy so much that ignored the recognition of Chinese characters, which deviates from the purpose of language teaching. In addition, if it is unable to decide which group is winner for too long, students may lose their interest in the game.
