5 Fun And Engaging Vocabulary Guessing Games

25th June 2024

Vocabulary is one of the essential tools which not only help learners to learn any language but it also helps them to learn different subjects. Most of the teachers prefer to teach vocabulary in an old-fashioned way through traditional lesson plans.

However, to engage today’s generation of students, today’s English teachers must find creative and fun ways to make the vocabulary learning experience more interesting. In this blog post, we will be sharing some of the most meaningful and fun vocabulary guessing games to teach vocabulary to your learners in engaging ways.

So, without any further delay, let’s get started.

Best Teaching English One-on-One Vocabulary Guessing games

1. Guess Who?

As the name suggests, students need to guess the given characters. To give a more personalized touch, you can cut out several cartoon or animated characters, celebrities, or any stock images.

To conduct this activity, you need to pair up students and provide them with the same set of cut-out picture cards and instruct each student individually to choose a character on which they must focus. Then their partner will try to find out which character they are holding, by asking questions like-
 

• Is your cut-out character male or female?

• The character is aged, middle-aged, or a teen?

• Do they have brown hair?

Students should put all other cards down and focus only on the character that their partner has.

2. Hangman

Hangman is one of the classic games that can serve as a great warm-up or time-filler activity. It works well with any class size and can be adjusted to match the student's level. Start by thinking of a word like- “E” and writing the number of letters on the board using dashes. Encourage students to suggest letters and if they guess correctly, write them in the corresponding positions.

If they manage to guess the word correctly, they win!

However, if you finish drawing a hanging man before they guess the word, then you win. Hangman offers an enjoyable way to practice vocabulary and can be an exciting challenge for students of all ages.
 

3. Bananas

Banana’s is one of the fun games to teach vocabulary. To conduct this game you can instruct any student to come and step outside. During this time, the whole class will focus on a particular word. Now after deciding you can call that student back in the class and his/her task would be to figure out the word. They can ask the whole class for clues and information and they can replace the word with “Banana.”

For example-
 

• Is banana on the desk?

• Can I read read the banana?

• Is there any banana in the classroom?

4. Shopping-Trip

The shopping trip is one of the fun and interesting activities to teach vocabulary to learners. In this activity, you can share with students about items that you have bought during grocery shopping and they have to guess it. You can share some of the characteristics or any relevant clue related to the item.

For example- “It’s red in colour, and keeps the doctor at bay.” It’s an Apple.

5. Catch-Phrase

Catch-phrase is one of the most interesting games to teach English vocabulary one-on-one. In this game, students need to form a group and say a word without saying it directly. Students can say part of the word or multiple words that rhyme with that particular word.

For example- Catch-phrase is “People”

Students can say any personality, or individual name like- Aristotle, Leonardo Da Vinci, etc.

Make Vocabulary Learning Fun

Learning vocabulary is essential for every student to get a good grasp of any language. As a responsible ESL teacher, you can make their vocabulary learning experience fun and engaging with the above-mentioned games and activities for teaching vocabulary.

If you want to learn more interesting and engaging activities to improve the English language learning experience for your learners. Then, consider pursuing courses like the 220 Hours International TEFL Diploma Course, where you will get to learn from top expert industry trainers.

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