Today in my reading class, we played a vocabulary game before we started doing the reading activities. Students enjoyed the game a lot and when I gave them a vocabulary exercise at the end of the lesson, they managed to complete it with ease. Here is the game:
List the words you want to pre-teach.
Write them on slips of papers/cards
Put students into teams.
Distribute the cards and tell them to find and write the definitions of the words.
Monitor while they are finding the definitions of the words with more than 1 definitions
Once they finish writing the definitions, tell them they need to make up definitions for the words they have on their cards.
When they finish writing the made-up definitions, the game will start.
Team A reads the real definition and the made up definition of one of the words. Team B discusses together and chooses one of the definitions. If Team B chooses the correct definition of the word, they win a point, if they choose the made-up definition Team A gains a point. The game continues until all the words finish.
With B2-C1/2 students you may ask the students to come up with 2 made-up definitions.
For more vocabulary activities from this blog, please visit the older posts