When to Use the Games
Games are mostly used when there is some time left at the end of the lesson to keep students
quiet. However, Lee (1979, p. 3) proposes that “games should not be regarded as a marginal activity,
filling in odd moments when the teacher and class have nothing better to do.” With this in mind,
games should be put into the center of classroom teaching and they should not be treated as a merely
warm-up activity. Rinvolucri (1990) clarifies that a game can be used in any of these three stages
while using them as a part of grammar instruction:
a) before presenting a given structure, especially to find out diagnostically how much
knowledge is already known by the learners;
b) after a grammar presentation to see how much the group have grasped;
c) as a revision of a grammar area (p. 3).