Great Vocabulary Activities

There are many ways of practising new words, so students are able to recall and use them later. These activities can also be a lot of fun, and bring a great energy into the classroom. 

Please write down 5 vocabulary practice activities you use in your classrooms.

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Of these 5, which is your favourite and why? And which is your least favourite and why?

Here are some vocabulary activities, at least some of which will be familiar to you.

Matching Exercises

• Match pictures with words, then ask students to contextualise the words in simple sentences or dialogues

• Matching words to other words (antonyms, synonyms, collocations, lexical sets, etc.), and again, contextualise where possible
  

• Classifying words - show students a mixed selection of different words, and ask them to put them into particular lists according to specific categories. These could be by meaning, grammatical type, or pronunciation, for example.

Filling in the Gaps (cloze exercises)

• Cloze exercises with particular words. This is a standard gap-fill activity, but can be very controlled, so a set of sentences written especially for a particular area of vocabulary, or much less controlled, so an authentic piece of text, such as a short article, song, or authentic dialogue.

Word puzzles

• Mini-crosswords: first write a word vertically on board, eg. SCHOOL. Then put students into teams. Together they must write related words horizontally using letters from the original. the first team to do so scores a point. This could look like this:

               lesSon

                Class

          matHs

              hOmework

          histOry            

        penciL

• Word grids - make a grid of 10 squares by 10 on a piece of paper, or draw one on the board. You will put a letter in each square. As you do this, include a number of words you want your students to remember horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. Write them backwards if you want. And the fill the remaining spaces wirth random letters. Now put your students in teams and ask them to find as many words as possible in a given time limit.

Here's an example which contains words connected with the weather (words are highlighted in bold - though don't do this for your students!).

Students can of course make these word grids for each other.

Memory Games

• Memory games with object: show your students a number of physical objects, eg. items of food, and allow them 1 or 2 minutes to memorise them. Then cover them and ask the students to write down as many as they can remember. This is often better done in pairs or small groups.
  

• Memory games with words: as above, but with a numer of words or phrases written on the board or large piece of paper

• Memory games with texts: as above, but this time show your students a short paragraph or dialogue. In pairs or small groups they must re-create the text as accurately as possible. This is an excellent activity as it asks students to use their understanding of English as well as their memory. They should be able to work out how words work together from their knowledge of collocations, grammatical structures, word order, etc.

Definition Exercises & Games

• Guess the Word
  

          You define a word or a number of words for students to guess what the words are.

          Students can be in teams or in pairs.The team or pair which guesses the most words correctly is the winner.

          Students can also make the definitions (give them some words to work with). They then say the definitions for other students to guess.

• Back to the board (‘hotseat´)

          Divide the class into 4 teams.

          Write some words on the board.

          Bring 1 member from each team to the front of the class, where they stand facing their teams so they have their back to the board.

          You point to a word.

          Now, each team has to define the word for students at the front to say what it is (this will be very noisy - great fun and excellent listening practice).

          The student who says the word first wins their team a point.

          After 3-5 words,change it so another member of the team comes to the front.

          The team at the end wiht the most points is the winner.

• Categories

          Name a category, such as 'parts of the body', 'words connected wth the weather', or 'sports'.

          Now the students take it in turns to say a word connected with that category - give them 5 seconds only.

          If they cannot think of a new word, then they are 'out'.

          Change the category to a different one and start again.

          When only 1 student is leftm, they are the winner.

          With bigger classes, play this in teams or pairs.

• Category lists 

          Say 5 words to the class - they must all belong to the same category.

          Ask your students to guess the category.

          Now ask them to make their own lists (this can be done in pairs or small teams).

          Now ask them to read out their lists - the other students say the what the category is.

• Anagrams - individual words or sentences (could be several individual words but in incorrect order)
• Rearrange jumbled sentences - can be done by giving each student a word, then calling one to the front, where others have to join him/her with their words in order to create a sentence
• Creating dialogues using specific vocab
• Creating stories using specific vocab

• Bingo - with new words, irregular nouns, opposites, etc.
• Examine word families (hot-hotter-hottest-heat-heating-heater-to heat)
• Brainstorm words - give one word, eg. school, get students to volunteer related vocab
• Vocab chains - he went to the shop and bought a banana, he went to the shop and bought a banana and an orange, he went to .
• Odd man out - meaning, pronunciation, spelling, etc.
• Read story/description - at the end, students draw what they see
• 'Simon Says'
• Find words, eg. from international´ (in, on, at, ten, etc.)
• Board Race - 2/3 teams - have to race to the board to write up specific lexical set