Word Games: 3 Quick Vocabulary Builders

Word games are great to use in the ESL classroom, especially when you're in need of quick, low preparation and fun ESL games. In countries like Australia and England, it's not just the online and smart phone versions of the scrabble like activities like "Words With Friends" or one of the many Facebook word games...it's the old-fashioned newspaper and magazine crosswords and simple anagram type activities that are still very popular as a relaxing way to pass a few hours...however, when it comes to teaching in a country like China, word games are not something that they commonly partake in. Maybe because of the difference in the language (Chinese characters) I'm not really sure? but being a word game fan myself, I really like to throw some into class every now and again. They are good vocabulary builders.


When it comes to moving word games into a classroom situation, you may find that your school or teaching premises doesn't have the technology to have online facilities for you... nor any luxuries like interactive whiteboards etc. Before playing these I organise my class into groups so they compete against each other. I also give each group a small whiteboard (how to make your own whiteboard), whiteboard marker and cleaning cloth. It makes the lesson even more entertaining and ensures they work in teams but if you don't want to do that, each team will need a piece of paper and a pen.

Note : For teachers in China, be warned, if you are teaching middle school students, and the school gets a weekly English publication delivered, like a small newspaper... our school has one called "teen", then there is a chance that the students already have to do a weekly crossword. I can tell you from experience (when I first started this job)...It doesn't go down well to give them another to do in class. There are however, other word game options and I will give you three fully presented, quick preparation games, right here for you now, that you could use separately as time fillers, or put together to fill out one whole word game lesson.

Word Games

1) First Letter, Last Letter

I like to play this first as it is a great warm up activity.

What To Do:

Give the students a group such as food, animals, things you like doing, things you find at school etc...

The aim is to write a list of 10 things within this category whilst sticking to the first letter, last letter rule. This means that whatever letter the first word ends with, the second word must start with and so on....so if you told them that the group of items they must list will all be types of "food", a list could end up looking like this.

1. Egg


2. grape


3. eggplant


4. turnip


5. pork


6. kiwi


7. icecream


8. meat


9. tuna


10. apple

First team to finish, with all correct answers...get 10 points.

2) Letter Square

Also known as word square or word block, I admit that having a love of word games myself, you could find me every weekend, waiting for the newspaper to arrive just to do this puzzle. It's very simple to organise in a class and will keep the students thinking and concentrating for the whole lesson if you let them.

What To Do:

Draw a 3x3, 9 squared grid on the blackboard

Pre arrange a nine letter word and write each letter into one of the nine squares making sure you mix the arrangement of the word up to make it a little more difficult. Make sure that the word is suitable for the level you teach. If they work from an English book, you could check the glossary of words at the end of the workbook and find a nine letter one, but it's not difficult to think of some common words to use.

Here's my example of one for junior 1 or 2



The object of course is to use the 9 letters to make words.

You can only use each letter once. In the above word square there is only one "T", so you could make the word "ten" but not "tent". There are however two E's, so you could make the word "teen".

The ultimate aim is to find the 9 letter word, which is in this case TELEPHONE. If a team finds the nine letter word award them 5 points and 1 point for every other word they find. You could get into scoring differently according to how many letters are in each word they find, but it is time-consuming and messy.

Set a time limit of about 10 minutes for this activity and then move on to the last word game.

3) Word Scramble

This is a pretty cool and surprisingly often takes the students quite a while to finish, so make sure you leave yourself enough time. Again it is very simple to set up with little preparation other than writing on the board.

What To Do:

Choose a category, or again you can use mine.... Here, I am using sports. I thought of 15 different sports and mixed the letters up. The students job is to un-scramble them. It is up to you whether you tell them the category, but I usually at least tell them that all the words belong to the same group of things. It is also your decision whether to let them use their dictionaries. I don't think it offers any advantage to finding a word they have no idea about, but it can help them if they know the sport, but are unsure of the English (which is fair enough). Be careful though that there isn't a picture page dedicated purely to sports at the front or back of their dictionaries.

Here's my sports word scramble list:

• LSKBTAEBLA - BASKETBALL


• NDMOBNATI - BADMINTON


• EHCYOK - HOCKEY


• NSITNE - TENNIS


• CRSOEC - SOCCER


• LYLBLOVALE - VOLLEYBALL


• LESABLBA - BASEBALL


• FOGL - GOLF


• SINTELEBANT - TABLE TENNIS


• XOGIBN - BOXING


• NGNURIN - RUNNING


• MYNGTCISSA - GYMNASTICS


• GIWIMNSM - SWIMMING


• NDIGVI - DIVING

You can either score this as the first team to finish gets the highest points for example...1st team to finish 10 points, 2nd team to finish 8 points etc...OR if no team looks like finishing before class is over, give them 1 point for each word they have un-scrambled.



Photo Credit: CarbonNYC via Compfight cc">Photo by CarbonNYC, some rights reserved.