【正文】 f the United States and Piaget of Swiss. The history and present situations of game teaching in China From ancient times, Chinese people thought highly of children’s education. In Song Dynasty, private schools paid much attention to the children’s interests. Zhu Xi also stressed the importance of happy teaching. Since 1949 Chinese education has changed greatly. Many children’s educators have achieved great success. They have summed up a lot of games or activities such as teaching through children’s songs, teaching in situations, simulating teaching, P .E. games and so on. In the contemporary, Mr. Chen Heqin was one of the greatest educators who made the outstanding contribution to Chinese children’s education and set up the first research center of children’s educationKindergarten in Gulou. Many games there were full of creation. He expounded that games were activities that were beneficial to children’s psychological and physiological development. Only games could make children lively and teachers should make good use of all kinds of game materials and give them enough changes to practice according to their age. Hu Shuyi, another educator who encouraged children to play games more than seventy years ago. From modern age to the contemporary, game teaching theory has been improved step by step. Many educators, philosophers or thinkers encouraged children to play games, such as Hong Zirui, Hui Youlian and Li Shengping et al. They presented games should be integrated with learning. Now, more and more people abroad and at home e to realize the importance and the urgency of game teaching in the primary school. As we all know, game teaching is a very useful way to improve effectiveness of English teaching in primary school. Ⅱ 、 Definition of games Games are a different kind of play activity. They are highly structured and include specific rules to be followed. Specially, teaching game is one of the kinds of the games. Byrne (1995) gave the definition to games as a form of play governed by rules. He suggested:“Games should be enjoyed and fun. They are not just a diversion, a break from routine activities, but a way of getting the learner to use the language in the course of the game”. From the above, we can safely drawn a conclusion that “game” in language teaching (teaching game) can be defined as an anized activity that usually has the following properties: A. a particular task or objective。 promoting the development of student’ intelligence。 therefore, a properly introduced game can be one of the highest motivating techniques. ② Help students to find pleasure from learning English. Various kinds of language teaching games can be employed to make a lively and enlightening classroom. Games can make learning interesting and exciting, can arouse the learning enthusiasm of the students, and can promote students’ participation. During the game teaching, all the students can be offered opportunities for academic success. Games can make English classes more interesting and easier so that English learning will bee a pleasure and English classroom will bee a pleasant place. Confucius holds happy learning not only makes one delight in learning but also never makes one sick of learning. ③ Help teachers to meet children’s needs. During students’ growing they have some needs, and the games can create a suitable situation to meet children’s needs: security, love, respect and selffulfillment so that students can find pleasure and selfconfidence in such circumstances, it can not only help to grasp the language points, and to light up the classroom, but also improve learners’ interest in the long run. ④ Help teachers to create a stressfree learning environment for students. A stressfree learning environment is vital for children to learn English. Games can help teachers enlighten their students to think actively, and encourage them to use their heads, eyes, mouths, hands more often, and can guide students to study voluntarily and can arouse students’ desire of using foreign language to express their ideals and feelings. Thus their prehension and expression abilities