Ular Naga: A traditional Game for Teaching English for Young Learners and Building Their Characters

Abstract

Teaching English to young learners is always challenging. Young learners have a short concentration span, and
they like learning by doing. Teachers of young learners must be creative to arrange classroom activities to
accommodate young learners' characteristics. Playing games is a type of exercise that can motivate and engage
young learners in learning—children like games for sure. The use of fun in the English classroom can help teachers
provide education in more natural ways and more challenging for their young learners. Games can make learning
a language less stressful and more comfortable for the students. There are typical traditional games that could build children's characters. Ular Naga is one of the classic games that still exists in Indonesia. This paper is to offer
another way to use the Ular Naga game in an English classroom. Ular naga game can be used as an alternative
teaching strategy for the teachers to teach English, especially to teach the students speaking and enhance their
vocabulary.