Play games and improve your English

27th August 2017

When you think of studying English, you probably see yourself sitting at a desk with your nose in a book. But studying English doesn’t always have to be this way. Learning English can be a fun social activity. This week we want to show you a great selection of games that will help you to improve your English at ease.

Scrabble

No English learning game list can be complete without the Scrabble game! This classic game is a great way to improve your vocabulary and spelling, and you don’t need to have a big group of people playing to enjoy it.

How to play: You have to arrange your selection of letters (maximum of 7) into words and place it on the game board according to the rules. Letters earn you points and special tiles on the board give you extra points. The aim of the game is to beat your opponent (s) by coming up with the best words, and putting them in the best place on the board.

You can even download scrabble on your phone!

Two truths and a lie

Don’t have money to buy board games? Don’t worry. In this game, you only need a pen and a piece of paper. You can play this game with as many people as you want.

How to play: You write three facts about yourself. Two of the facts should be true and one should be a lie. Read the facts to the other people in the group and they have to guess which are true and which is false. They can ask extra questions about the facts to better guess which sentence is a lie. Give it a go and discover who has the best poker-face.

Taboo

Taboo is a word guessing game and you can either play it on your phone or buy it in a shop. We promise it is full of fun and you will not only improve your English but also your creative thinking skills.

How to play: Every card in Taboo shows one main word. Below the main word you will find a list of words that are similar to the main word, either synonyms (words which have the same meaning) or words which are closely associated with the main word. Your task is to describe the main word to someone without using any of the words on the card. For example, your card’s main world is “”baseball” and the words under are “sport,” “game,” “court”, “bounce”, “free time”.  In this case you cannot say “it is a game you play in your free time.” How would you describe basketball without using any of those words?

As you can see, this game is much harder than it sounds at first. It makes you think in creative ways. Thanks to Taboo, you will discover that your vocabulary is greater than you had thought. Taboo can be played with a dictionary by your side and any number of people, using teams of two or more players.

Once Upon a Time

Once upon a Time is a great game to improve your speaking skills.

How to play: In this game, players create a story together using cards that show typical elements from fairy tales. The narrator (the person telling the story) starts inventing the story, trying to use all the cards in their hand in a logical way. Other players can interrupt by placing down their own cards to continue the story with different ideas.

It is a really fun game where it is not about winning points, but rather to create an interesting and entertaining story with your friends.

Guess who?

Guess who is a great way to practise asking and answering questions. 

How to play: Each player starts the game with a board that includes cartoon images of 24 people with their first name printed underneath. To begin, all the images are facing up. Each player selects one of these characters without revealing it to their opponent. The opponent must guess who you have chosen by asking questions. Some of the questions you can ask are: “ Are you a boy”, “ Do you play football”, “ Are you tall”.  The player then eliminates candidates by flipping those imagines down until one is left.

If you don’t have the board, don’t worry. You can draw some people on paper or print some photos of famous people from the Internet.

There are a lot of board games that can be used to learn English. Choose the games that sound the most fun and which are best suited for your level of English. If you want to take your learning to the next level, don’t forget to look at our Study Tips.