English vocabulary

Building a wide English vocabulary means learning words in useful groups, and this page follows that approach. It covers phrasal verbs, idioms, the choice between make and do, opposites, food and cooking words, travel vocabulary and commonly confused words. Learners from A1 to C1 can revise the items they have met in class, stretch into new ones, and practise telling similar words apart. Each topic is small enough to finish in a few minutes, so it is easy to return to a single area, such as the words needed for a trip, without working through everything else first.

A language teacher might use a round as a warm-up, a recap of last week's word list, or a homework task a student can repeat at home. A cover teacher can run one with almost no preparation. Corporate trainers who support staff learning English can use the travel and food topics as a light team session or an icebreaker, and bring back idioms and phrasal verbs as a short refresher between longer modules. Mixed groups work well because players at different levels can still join the same live round and compare answers afterwards. Quiet learners often find a game an easier way to take part.

Matching pairs suit idioms, phrasal verbs and opposites, where the task is to link two things that belong together. Multiple-choice quizzes work for food and cooking words and travel vocabulary, where a clear prompt and a few options are enough. The make or do game is a sorting task, so learners decide which verb each noun takes. Commonly confused words use fill in the blanks, which asks players to choose the right word in context. You can try any game with Play now and no sign-up, and a host can run it live for a group.