If you’re looking for a fun word association game or activity, then you’re certainly in the right place. Keep on reading for everything you need to know about fun word association games.
Word Association Activity
This ESL word association activity is an ideal way to help students activate prior knowledge that they might have about a topic. Or, you can use it at the end of a unit to show students how much they have learned!
The key to having a happy ESL classroom is to mix things up in your classes. After all, nobody likes doing the same thing over and over again. Try out some new activities today…here’s a simple vocabulary one you can start with.
Skills: Reading/writing/speaking
Age: 7+ (must be able to read + write)
Materials Required: Workbook or butcher paper and pens
Word Association is an ESL vocabulary activity that can be used to introduce a new topic, lesson, theme, etc. You have to write a single relevant word in the middle of the board or paper and have students take turns adding as many words or images related to that word as possible.
For example…the centre word could be “school.” Some of the other branches could be subjects (Math, English, History, Gym, etc) while another branch could be school supplies (pen, paper, ruler, etc.) Finally, you might have one about recess or break time (play games, tag, climb, jump, swing set). And keep going with more associations from there.
The subject or topic can be whatever you’re teaching that day. Another topic it works well for is body parts. Check out some more parts of the body activities here.
For large classes, have students work in groups with separate pieces of paper taped to the wall or the top of the table/ grouped desks. After a given amount of time (3-5 minutes, or when you see no one is adding anything new), discuss their answers.
It’s also a nice activity for teaching English online so give it a try today!
Teaching Tips for This ESL Vocabulary Activity
For large classes, butcher paper works best, so more students can write at one time. If that isn’t possible, have 5-6 board markers available.
If using butcher paper, prepare in advance, including taping to the wall, unless students will be working at their desks. Finally, if students will be working at their desks, write the word on each table’s page in advance, but don’t hand them out until you have given your instructions.
This activity is often quite a fun way to start off a holiday themed class. For even more ideas, check out: ESL Christmas Activities and Games.
Procedure for Word Association Game
1. Write a single word relevant to your new topic, lesson, or theme on the white board or butcher paper.
2. Have students take turns adding as many words or images related to that word as possible. My rule is that each student has to add at least one word, no matter how small.
3. After 3-5 minutes (or less, if no one is adding anything new), discuss their answers.
4. For larger classes, put students into groups of 4-6 and let them work together on this. You can choose the most well-organized one to show as an example to the rest of the class. And these papers can act as resources for the rest of the class.
Word Associations Activity for ESL
Follow-Up to this Word Association Activity
You may wish to spend quite a bit of time teaching your students how to do mind-mapping, or brainstorming the first time they do it. This is because it can be a very useful skill that they can take with them to all of their classes. It’s often a great first step before doing almost any kind of writing task or project.
Remember to teach your students that they’re not to edit their ideas at this point. Just to write down anything that comes to mind. And that they should also be doing this very quickly.
Word Associations Worksheets
Do you want to give your students some extra practice with this kind of thing? The good news is that there are a ton of great word association exercises online that you can just print off and use in your classes. If that’s not some ESL teaching gold then I’m not sure what it! Here are some of the best options:
ISL Collective
ESL Printables
ESL Galaxy
Did you Like this Word Associations Game?
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Word Association ESL Vocabulary Activity: Join the Conversation
Do you like this activity, or do you have some other favourite word association games? Leave a comment below and let us know your thoughts. We’d love to hear from you about anything word association game!
Also be sure to give this article a share on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. It’ll help other busy teachers, like yourself find this useful resource.
Word association game
Last update on 2022-07-17 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
Check your vocabulary for TOEFL
Word association: Nouns
Complete each of the following sentences with one
noun. This noun should be one that is often used (i.e., it collocates)
with the verbs, adjectives, and other words in italics. Use these words
to fill in the crossword on page 71.
To help you, the first and last letters
of each word have been given to you.
|
Across |
|
|
1 |
B__________d is often preceded by the |
|
5 |
An action can have a / an adverse, |
|
7 |
When they speak, a person might have a broad, |
|
8 |
If you are not sure about the answer to |
|
11 |
You can accept, ask for, follow, |
|
12 |
You can give a problem careful, detailed, |
|
14 |
A s__________n can be constructive, |
|
15 |
You can disobey, disregard, |
|
17 |
A s__________n to a problem or dispute |
|
19 |
You can ask, deny, gain, |
|
20 |
You can encounter, experience, |
|
21 |
A q__________n can be academic, educational, |
|
22 |
O__________y is often preceded by the |
|
25 |
When you are trying to guess or |
|
29 |
A product or a person can have broad, |
|
32 |
You can collect, destroy, |
|
33 |
M__________e can be alternative, |
|
34 |
When you do something, you usually have |
|
Down |
|
|
2 |
If you are not careful, or if you are |
|
3 |
You can accept, assume, bear, |
|
4 |
You can conclude, negotiate, |
|
6 |
An object can have distinctive, important, |
|
9 |
If someone has a rather “negative” |
|
10 |
You can have a brilliant, checkered, |
|
12 |
When you work as part of a team, you |
|
13 |
You can give a / an accurate, brief, |
|
16 |
C__________m of something (for example, |
|
18 |
You can conduct, demand, launch, |
|
23 |
For actions and achievements, you can command, |
|
24 |
When doing something complicated, you |
|
26 |
A s__________e can be alphabetical, |
|
27 |
J__________t can be affected, delivered, |
|
28 |
You can undertake a / an ambitious, |
|
30 |
You can assess, chart, check, |
|
31 |
If someone does something wrong, you |
ANSWER
KEY
Full list of words from this list:
-
welter
a confused multitude of things
-
interlink
be interwoven or interconnected
-
interconnect
be interwoven or interconnected
-
complect
be interwoven or interconnected
-
override
travel on the back of (a horse) too hard
-
nullification
counteracting or overriding the effect or force of something
-
offset
a compensating equivalent
-
cancel
declare null and void
-
countervail
oppose and mitigate the effects of by contrary actions
-
invalidate
make no longer acceptable for use
-
quash
declare invalid
-
annul
cancel officially
-
negate
make ineffective by counterbalancing the effect of
Created on March 19, 2009
(updated March 30, 2009)
There are several techniques that can help you learn and remember vocabulary in the language you are learning. In this post, we will explore techniques that help you remember what a word means by associating it with an image in your mind. Association links new information with old information stored in your memory. If you link a word with an image, it can be linked with other information already stored in your memory and so you will remember it better. For example, to remember a person’s name, you can relate it to a feature of their appearance. Here are a few more examples of using images to help you remember vocabulary.
Linkword Technique
The Linkword mnemonic (memory-aid) technique, developed by Michael Gruneberg, uses an image to link a word in one language with a word in another language. Here are some examples from French vocabulary for English speakers: the word for “rug” or “carpet” in French is “tapis”. To remember this, the Linkword technique says you should imagine an image of an oriental rug with the picture of a tap woven into it in chrome thread. “Tap” is found at the beginning of “tapis” so should help you remember the word when you visualise a rug. Next, the word for “grumpy” is “grognon”, so you should imagine a grumpy man groaning – “groan” sounds like “grognon” so should help you remember it. Other examples from German and Spanish are: to remember “Raupe” (German for “caterpillar”), you should imagine a caterpillar with a rope around its middle. To remember the Spanish word for cat, “gato”, you can imagine a cat eating a chocolate cake, or “gateau”.
Visualisation Technique
It is not always necessary to think of words in your own language in the visualisation. It is also possible to learn vocabulary by associating the word with an image. This technique uses the idea that when you hear a word, you visualise things that are associated with it in your mind. For example, when you hear “bird”, you think of what a bird looks like. When you hear “sweet”, you think of things that taste or smell sweet such as desserts or flowers. This is how we understand the word’s meaning, according to this technique.
Teachers teaching languages can show students a picture representing the meaning of a word they are trying to teach them. Otherwise, they can act out the meaning. They can ask students to think of things that are associated with the word, such as food if the word is “tasty” or a successful or hardworking person if the word is “ambitious” (and abstract concept). If you are learning by yourself, you can draw pictures of the words you are learning or think about images that the word conjures up.
This visualisation technique can also help you learn connotations of words (ideas or feelings that a word invokes beyond its literal meaning).
The Town Language Mnemonic
An extended example of the visualisation technique is the town language mnemonic developed by Dominic O’Brien. It is based on the idea that the core vocabulary of a language relates to everyday things – which can typically be found in a town or village. To use this technique, you should choose a town you are familiar with and use objects there as cues to recall images that link to words in your new language. Here are some examples:
Nouns in the town
Nouns should be associated with locations where you might find them: the word for “book” should be associated with an image in your mind of a book on a shelf in the library. The word for “bread” should be associated with an image of a loaf in a bakery. Words for vegetables should be associated with a greengrocer’s shop. If there is a farm outside the town it can help you remember the names of animals.
Adjectives in the park
Adjectives should be associated with a park in the town: words like “green”, “small”, “cold”. People in the park can help you remember adjectives for different characteristics or hair colour or
Verbs in the gym
Verbs can be associated with a gym or playing field. This allows you to make associations for “lift”, “run”, “walk”, “hit”, “eat”, “swim”, “drive”, etc.
Try It Yourself
As well as being powerful tools for learning and memorising vocabulary, these techniques can be fun and can keep you interested in learning new words. Lists of words can be useful too but images can help jog your memory. You may remember the words better if you write them on a whiteboard too – you are active and moving around when you do this so your brain is stimulated more than when you are sitting at a desk. We hope you find these tips useful. Let us know if they work for you!
Written by Suzannah Young
A word association game is a game in which a word is given to a student and then that student must say an associated word or phrase. Word association games are a fantastic way to help students practice using their existing vocabulary and to learn new English words.
While playing word association games, students are likely to encounter words that they have not heard before. These words are associated with the vocabulary they already know, and so it is very easy for students to guess the meanings of these new words. This makes word association games fantastic for learning new words.
Let’s look at some different ways in which you can play word association games with your students.
Simple Word Association
The simplest way to play word association games in class is to simply give one student a word and ask that student to say the first thing that comes to mind. For example, if you say the word “drink” a student might say the word “juice”. Then, the next student should say the first word which comes to their mind, for example, “orange”.
If you’re playing this game with kids, then to make it even more fun you could get them to pass a ball as they play. When a student has the ball it is their turn, and once they have said their word they should pass the ball to the next player.
However, if you are playing word association games while social distancing in the classroom, then it is probably best not to pass a ball around. Instead, you could ask your students to stand up from their desks when it is their turn.
Word Association Topics
Another fun way to play word association games in class is to choose a particular topic and ask students to say words associated with that topic. Usually, when playing word association games, students would start at one word, and after a few turns, the words might become completely unrelated to the original topic.
But when playing a word association game with a particular topic, all words must be related to the main topic. For example, if you choose the topic ‘food’ then every word must be a kind of food. If a student says ‘milk’ for example, then that student would be out as it is a drink and not a food.
Here are some topics you could use for your next word association game:
- Types Of Food
- Types Of Drinks
- Countries
- Hobbies
- Sports
- Superheroes
- Colors
- Furniture in a house
- School Subjects
- Types Of Weather
Guess The Secret Word
A really fun way to get your students thinking while playing a word association game is to have them try and guess a secret word. Rather than have students say any associated word that comes to mind, instead think of a secret word and tell them some words associated with that.
Then students should try to guess what the secret word is. To make it more fun you could even ask students to guess other words which might be associated to the secret word.
For example, if the secret word was ‘yellow’ you could say the word “banana” to your students. Then they might guess something like “apple” and you can tell them it is not related. But when they say something like “lemon” you can tell them that it is associated with it.
After some time students will be able to guess the secret word. This way of playing a word association game is a fantastic way to get students to practice their thinking skills while learning new vocabulary.
Ryhming Words
This way of playing word association games can lead to some hilarious answers. Simply give students a word and ask them to come up with a word which rhymes. In this game, the words don’t necessarily have to be related. They just need to rhyme.
For example, you might say the word “cold” and students might say “old”, “mold”, “bold”, “told”, etc. The first student who can’t come up with a rhyming word is out.
Chain Game
This last word association style game is one you have probably played at some point in your life. In this game a student would say one word and then the next student must say a word which starts with the last letter of the previous word.
For example, if the word was ‘pizza’ then the next student must say a word beginning with ‘a’. Then, the next student might say “apple” and so the next student must say a word beginning with ‘e’. And so, on. The first student who cannot say a word is out.
Thanks for reading. I hope you found some inspiration for your next word association game.
Before you go, don’t forget to check out our free lesson materials, including ESL Games, PowerPoint Games, ESL Worksheets, ESL PowerPoints, and ESL Printables.