Using Language Games To Promote Literacy Skills In The Esl Classroom At Primary School Level

ABSTRACT This study was carried out in St John Bosco`s Basic school in Navrongo in the KassenaNankana Municipality in the 2012/2013 academic year. Thirty Pupils in Class 3 were used for the Research. The purpose of the study was to experiment the use of language games to promote literacy skills among primary school pupils in rural schools, where teaching and learning resources are woefully inadequate. The focus of the study was on the following aspects of literacy skill; speaking, reading and writing. Given the difficult nature of teaching and learning literacy skills, especially in areas where teaching and learning resources are inadequate, this research employed the use of language games such as board games as an innovative way to promote literacy development in the primary school. This study used the experimental design. Pre-test and post-test were used to measure the literacy level of pupils before and after the experiment respectively. Both the experimental and control groups were randomly selected. It was only the experimental group that was taken through the use of language games. The general outcome of the results indicates that the experimental group benefitted from the use of language games in the classroom as compared to their colleagues in the control group. This shows that the use of language games in the English as a Second Language classroom can significantly improve the literacy skills of pupils in the primary school. As a result, it is recommended that efforts should be made to take pragmatic measures to incorporate language games into the national literacy programme, starting from the lower primary level. This will go a long way to improve the literacy skills of learners in the country