Teaching English Vocabulary through Games

Teaching vocabulary is one of the important parts in ELT besides teaching four language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing). Students usually get difficulties in producing sentences or utterances because they are lack of vocabularies. So, English teachers must improve students' vocabularies using appropriate techniques to get new vocabularies as many as possible. To make students enjoy the process of teaching and learning vocabulary in the classroom, teachers can use games as one of the techniques to improve students' vocabulary. Some studies have proven that teaching vocabulary through games has better result. The following are some recommended games to teach vocabulary taken from some resources and based on the writer's experiences for EFL students.

1. Flash Card

Teachers can prepare their own flashcard or search the printable flashcards on internet. Teachers choose the cards that contain some words relate to the topic under discussion. The cards are also completed by pictures and pronunciations (phonetics) of those words to help students memoirzing them easily. The cards can be designed in a colorful form to attract students' attention.

2. Make a Match Game

In this game, teachers prepare some pieces of thick papers in small size. The English words are written on those cards. They can be in the form of synonym, antonym or question, and answer. Those cards will be spread out to all students and then students have to find the cards' pair. This game is very helpful for students to study the meaning of English vocabularies.

3. Category

In this game, students are divided into small groups. Each group will be given a piece of paper consisting of some columns. There is alphabet A - Z in one column and other categories in other columns (such as animals, fruits and food and drink). Each group must fill the categories based on the letter of alphabets. Group which gets the most words than others will be the winner.

4. Arranging letter/Word Tree

This game can be done in group or individual, it depends on the number of students or situation in the classroom. Students are given a certain word phrase, such as SANDCASTLE, WATERMELON, AEROPLANE, STARFRUIT, etc. After that, students must arrange some new words based on the letter in that word phrase. Students who can make new words more than others will be the winner.

5. Search words

This game is the simple one. Teachers can make their own search words based on the topic or browse this game in printable search word. This technique is very interesting and students usually like this so much. They can study the English more interesting, they also practice focusing on something through this game while studying the meaning and spelling of words.