In recent years, game-based learning (GBL) has been considered as an effective way to motivate students in a communicational and educational environment. With its effectiveness, an English teacher in a primary school is curious how GBL works in an EFL context. Thus, the teacher applied the idea in
helping his fifth graders acquire vocabulary knowledge and sentence patterns.

What is game-based learning?
Game-based learning generally refers to acquiring knowledge via board games, digital games or physical games. To be more specific, it is the borrowing of certain gaming rules and applying them to real-life settings to engage players. Before students play a game, it may help them increase learning motivation to engage in the learning context which benefited the students’ learning achievement (Hsieh, Y. H., Lin, Y.-C., & Hou, H. T., 2015; Hwang, G. J., Hsu, T. C., Lai, C. L., & Hsueh, C. J., 2017).

Characteristics of GBL:
Three elements could be categorized as a successful design of a game. First, the learning process takes place via different and attractive scenarios. Diverse tasks could retain the students’ attention while learning. Second, the design of the game should be based on overcoming different challenges which
could help each student meet different learning needs. Lastly, the learning experience should be positive and interesting to help increase learners’ motivation and the sense of achievement.

Integrating games in an English classroom:
Game one: Quizlet
The teacher applied Quizlet to make the students match the assigned words and pictures to see if the students could successfully recognize the words with correct meanings.

Before the class, the teacher keys in the assigned words and chooses one related picture to each word from the website.

During the class, the students could manipulate the mobile device or interactive whiteboard to match the words with correct pictures.

Ss manipulate the mouse to complete the mission of matching words and pictures.
https://quizlet.com/zh-tw Website from Quizlet with different functions for Ss to practice the vocabulary.

Game two: Tog-of-war
The game was designed as a board game for the students to practice the sentence pattern. In this game, students are required to work as a pair. Each pair gets one game board and a dice and each student gets three tokens.
Game rules:
1. Player A puts one token on each picture dice , , of the game board separately. Player B puts the tokens
on , , .
2. Player A throws the dice, if it shows 1 on the dice, the token on moves forward for 1 step.
3. Player B asks the questions and player A answers with the assigned word based on the token moves.
4. (If the 2 tokens from (player A) and from (player B) are next to each other…) Player A throws the dice and shows number 1, the token on (player A) moves forward for 1 step.
5. When the token from moves forward to (player B’s territory), player A gets 1 point.
6. Player A & B put their own token back and restart the game.
7. Same way for( , ) and ( , )

Ss are playing board game to practice the first sentence pattern.

Tr. shows the example for the activity.	Ss answer the questions.

Game three: Sentence Powerpoint game
The purpose of this game is for students to keep practicing the second sentence pattern.

In this game, the teacher designs several slides via Powerpoint. On each slide, there are several celebrities with favorite subjects. The students are given ten seconds to remember all of the information. After that, teacher shows each slide with one celebrity and asks the target question, and the students need to response to the question with the correct words.

Ss need to remember the information	a slide to ask Ss question and answer

Tr. shows the example for the activity.	Ss answer the questions.

Conclusion:
After observing the English class by other English teachers from Hsinchu City, the integration of game-based learning in this language classroom tended to be effective for the primary school students to acquire the assigned vocabulary and sentence patterns. The reason is because the students could
successfully engage in the learning process via the diverse games (both digital and board games). With different activities, the students are required to complete different challenges. During the process, it helps students not only in the reading and listening skills, but in the communicational skill in an interesting
and educational environment. Thus, language instructors are suggested to apply such ideas into their classes to see if the idea could also help different groups of language learners.