The attitudes of EFL teachers and students towards the use of games in Turkish high schools and universities

The main concern of this study is to find out the attitudes of Turkish EFL teachers and the students towards the use of games in high school and universities. It is argued that games offer acquisition benefits, and therefore, should no longer be considered merely as amusing activities which break up the regular routines of class. The first step in this study was to examine the theory, definition, pedagogical aspects, and classification of games that are given in the professional literature. Next, questionnaires were designed to assess the attitudes of Turkish EFL teachers and students concerning the importance and benefits of games in the classroom. The questionnaires were administered to a total of 8 high school and 8 university teachers, and 60 high school and 64 university students. The results indicate that most teachers and students agree that games are necessary activities in the EFL classroom. All the teachers who participated in the study indicated that games are relaxing and acquisition activities, however, they ranked games low in frequency of use in comparison to nine other classroom activities. Students also ranked games rather low in usefulness in comparison to the same nine other activities. A limitation of this study is that it is only a survey of teachers' and students' attitudes towards games. Future research could be done based on class observations of games in use and on experimental testing of particular games.