Whenever in the five-minute breakbetween the English class and recess time, St. Bonaventure Catholic Primary School pupils came to the computer room, joyously played video games, pounded the computer keyboards, played English word battle games, and often spreadexcited laughter.

St. BonaventureCatholic Primary School introduced “Gamify Learning”- digital English learning games three years ago.Fromthe beginning of the two-monthtrial witha class of twentystudents, until now, the whole school that hasthirty classes studentsparticipatingthroughout the year.Cheung Wai Ching, Principal of theSt. BonaventureCatholic Primary School, said, “LearningEnglish vocabularyby playing digital games is fun and effective, thereforewe implement e-learning mode in order to adapt to new trends in education. Also, we encourage parents to spend some time with their children toparticipate in gamesand gainknowledge through playing games at home.”

In recent years,the Education Bureau has promoted e-learning actively. Digital games were not only entertaining tools. When students enjoyed the whole process of interactive e- learning, the impact of learning was higher. Principal Ms. Cheung said, “E- learning gamesare relating to the children's interests. Nowadays, children like to use computer. If they play video games often and don’t acquire anything, they will waste theirtime andlearning opportunities. However, creating a pleasantand fun learning atmosphereby means of video games can enhance their learning initiative.”St. Bonaventure Catholic Primary School pupils are participating in a digital game called “My Words JuniorPlus”. It contains various games of pronunciations, spellings and explanations. Also, it trains students to learn English vocabulary and has a total of more than 2,700 English words that was taken from the EDB 's proposal mostly. Teachers can also develop the vocabulary that appears in the game according to each class and let students tofamiliar with various English words in three aspects including listening, spelling and explanation. Principal Ms. Cheung said that the largest effectiveness of e-learning games was narrowing down the “Learning Differences”. “We have observed that third and fourth grade students who had poor English skills or lack of learning motivation had a great improvement on their recitation scores. Because of their interest in video games and being allowed to play against their classmates in class, students had more motivation to learn. Some students with poor English proficiency can also reach the top scores for spelling. Of course, for those students with advanced English proficiency, these e-learning games are complements for them. They can learn further and learn more new vocabulary,” Principal Ms. Cheung said.

Principal Ms. Cheung said that because video games are easy to use, video games can reduce the burdens of teaching for teachers, it also help evaluate and follow up onstudents’ learning progress, improve the quality of teaching, and cooperate with teaching programs. Parents can also learn with their children easilyat home by playing those video games. Principal Ms. Cheung suggested that parents can accompany their children to play English words games about 5-10 minutes in order to explain and revise vocabulary for them. Additionally, this is a great family activity. 

There are lots of e-learning game modes and content. When choosing them, what should we pay attention to? Principal Ms. Cheung would like to remind parents that video games are easy learning tools for children, so first of all, pay attention to the selection of easy-to-use. Do not choose something which is too complicated and boring such as some task games and puzzles, etc. Choose something that is simple can make children to learn unconsciously in the process. Secondly, they have to be inspiring. For example, besides attractive visual effects, some challenging adventure of puzzle games can also encourage children to think criticallyand to be creative. Also, games have message platformsareeven better. If they have some information about the cross-school or cross-regional competitions and sharing, it will make kids more involved and motivated to participate in those games.