Vocabulary Practice Activities
This page contains a collection of games and activities that help teachers to make the teaching of vocabulary fun, motivating and memorable. Each page has been formatted to print correctly. The activities are free for classroom use, and they can be used to supplement language teaching or to provide additional practice.
Call My Bluff - students try to guess correct definition of a word based on a number of mixed definitions written out by the class.
Dictionary Definitions - learners try to guess what a word is after hearing it's dictionary definition.
English Revision - English Revision is a game where learners build up a sentence using vocabulary items. Eventually someone will say something wrong and that person goes out of the game.
Forehead Guessing - players form a circle and take turns trying to guess a word that is written on their foreheads.
Hot Seats - players from each team sits in a "hot seat". Teams compete against each other to elicit a word from the person in the "hot seat" without saying what the word is.
I Spy - a very old guessing game that involves saying the first letter of a mystery word.
Mystery Word - learners work together to "absorb" other players into their fold.
Odd One Out - learners need to identify an item that does not belong to a vocabulary group and give explanations for their choice.
Phrase Ball Antonyms - players take turns saying an antonym and throwing a ball to other players.
Rhyming Couplets - players take turns writing a series of verses to form a ridiculous poem.
Sentence Fluency - played in small groups, learners work together to discuss how to form sentences.
Vocabulary Definitions - a fun review game that follows the rules of bingo.