Improve student vocabulary and memory with these classroom activities

Vaughan Jones
Vaughan Jones
Students working together laughing with a laptop in front of them

Reading time: 6.5 minutes

Vaughan Jones has more than 30 years of experience as an EFL Teacher, Trainer and Author. He’s lived and worked in France, Japan and Spain, and has worked to produce a number of coursebooks, including Focus, an English language learning series for upper-secondary students.

In this post he explores some tips and techniques for language teachers to help students improve their ability to remember vocabulary.

Teaching english vocabulary in 5 easy steps
Play
Privacy and cookies

By watching, you agree ɫèAV can share your viewership data for marketing and analytics for one year, revocable by deleting your cookies.

Focus on vocabulary and memory

All learning is remembering, said Plato… or was it Socrates? Anyway, I'm sure all of us agree that memory plays a central role in learning a foreign language and in particular, learning new words. The first two thousand are easy. As research tells us, approximately 80% of almost any text in English is made up of the 2,000 most frequent words.

Students meet these words repeatedly whatever they read or listen to, and whether they like it or not. And presumably they like it. Why? Because we know that repeated exposure is vital for long-term memorization, it effectively means that the first 2,000 words come 'for free'.

But what about the next thousand and the thousand after that? Researchers suggest that a student probably needs to know about 5,000 English words to pass the Cambridge First Certificate Exam and maybe upwards of 10,000 to be considered genuinely C2 level on the CEFR scale. For reference, an educated speaker of English as a first language will probably have a passive vocabulary of around 20,000 words.

What can we do to help our language students learn the thousands of less frequent words in the English language? It's not easy, that's for sure. There is no magic bullet. But here are some thoughts based on my own experience of many years in the classroom.

Focus on the most useful words

Sounds obvious, doesn't it? But time is always limited, so make sure that the words you are asking your learners to learn are the most useful, which probably means the most frequent for their particular stage in the learning process.

Usually your coursebook will do this for you. Vocabulary selection in the different levels of Focus is informed by the frequency criteria of the Global Scale of English. So in level 1 you might teach 'silly' (A1) but you wouldn't teach 'preposterous' (C1).

Focus on memorable first encounters

You never get a second chance to make a first impression. This is as true for words as it is for people. Encountering words for the first time in richly evocative, personalized, meaningful or unexpected contexts can help the memorization process. The more neurological stimulation, the better.

Focus on teaching effective word-learning strategies

This should be an ongoing 'learner training' aspect of your language teaching. Firstly, encourage students to expose themselves to as much English as possible outside the classroom: music lyrics, tweets, blog posts, vlogs, video clips, extensive reading and listening (including podcasts and spoken word), and watching films and TV series with English subtitles. These are just a few obvious sources.

Secondly, train language students on how to discover meanings and recognize correct usage: guessing from context, using dictionaries effectively or learning basic meanings of high-frequency affixes.

Finally, teach your students different ways of recording vocabulary. Encourage them to create paper or digital flashcards, introduce them to mnemonic systems such as the keyword method or simply explore more creative ways of noting words down.

Focus on systematic recycling

As you can't guarantee that words outside the top 2,000 will automatically reoccur at conveniently spaced intervals, it's your job to engineer systematic re-encounters with the new words you teach. A coursebook like Focus incorporates frequent recycling of target vocabulary, but it's never enough.

Also, what about all that vocabulary you taught when, for whatever reason, the lesson took a different direction and you went 'off-script' and started scribbling words on the board that weren't even in the coursebook?

My own very low-tech solution to capturing all those words is to institute a class scribe. Students take turns being the class scribe. They are given a blank sheet of paper at the beginning of the lesson and their role is simply to record any new language. This 'data', along with the target vocabulary in my coursebook, becomes my learning corpus. Having a class scribe:

  • provides a unique record of each lesson
  • helps improve classroom dynamics
  • can reveal learning styles and difficulties

Five vocabulary activities to focus on students' vocabulary and memory

So now I know which words I've taught, I can make sure that I recycle them at regular intervals. How do I do that? By equipping myself with a repertoire of tried-and-trusted 5 to 10-minute activities that can be used as lead-ins, warmers or fillers. Activities that require very little or no preparation and can be adapted to cover a wide variety of different lexical areas. Here are my favorite five.

1. Board bingo

Write down 12 to 15 words you want to revise on the board. Ask the students to choose five of the words and write them down. When they've done that, tell the students that you're going to read out dictionary definitions of the words in random order and that they should cross out their words if they think they hear the definition. When they've crossed out all five words, they shout Bingo.Make sure you keep a record of the word definitions you call out so that you can check the students' answers.

2. Odd one out

An old favorite. Think of the English vocabulary, pronunciation or grammar point you want to revise. Write five words on the board and ask students which one is the odd one out. The students then explain why. This usually relates to the meaning of the word, so in the following example, the odd one out is dog.

pink/red/dog/blue/yellow

However, you could have any criteria you like, say, the number of syllables. In that case, the odd one out would be yellow. In fact, the more unexpected the criteria, the better. The important thing is that they're looking at and thinking about the words you want them to revise.

3. Category dictation

Choose the language you want to review and devise a way of categorizing it into preferably two categories. Write the category headings on the board and ask the students to copy them. Then dictate the words (10-12 maximum) slowly and clearly, and ask the students to write them down in the correct category. For example, say you want to revise jobs, your categories might be jobs you do inside and jobs you do outside.

Then, dictate the words, eg a farmer, an archaeologist, a surgeon, an au pair, a vet, etc. The students write down the words in the correct category. When you've dictated the words, ask students to compare their lists.

4. Scrabble

Choose a lexical set you want to revise. Students work in pairs. They'll need a piece of paper, preferably graph paper with squares on.

Choose a topic, for exampleschool subjects. Student A writes 'Across' words and Student D writes 'Down' words. It's a good idea to provide the first word across and make sure that it's a long one.

Student D then adds another school subject down the paper from top to bottom. This word must intersect with the school subject written across the page.

Student A then writes another school subject that intersects with the school subject Student D has written down. Students continue taking turns to write in their own words.

Students build up words like on a Scrabble board until they can't think of any more school subjects. (You could make it into a game by saying that the last person to write a school subject is a winner.) Note that students must leave one square between each word – this is why it's better and clearer to use squared paper.

5. Random letters

This activity is good for revising any type of vocabulary. Ask the students to call out any seven letters from the alphabet. Write the letters scattered on the board. Then ask the students in pairs to think of a word beginning with each letter on the board. The most obvious criteria is to revise words from a specific lexical set that you have taught recently, egjobs, clothes, food, animals, etc.

Alternatively, you could simply ask them for words they've noted down in lessons over the past two weeks. Another possibility would be to find the most interesting words they can from the Student Book unit that you've just finished. If the lexical set you want them to revise is particularly rich, you could ask the students to think of as many words for each letter as they can in, say, three minutes: make it into a contest to find the most words.

It's always worth spending time thinking about how you can help your students to learn words more efficiently and more effectively. Way back in the 1970s, the linguist David Wilkins summed up the importance of vocabulary learning thus: 'Without grammar, very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed.'

Learn more about our range of courses

Bibliography

  • Bilbrough, N. (2011) Memory Activities for Language Learning. Cambridge University Press
  • Cook, G. (2000) Language Play, Language Learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press
  • Thornbury, S (2002) How to Teach Vocabulary. ɫèAV
  • Webb, S. & Nation, P. (2017) How Vocabulary is Learned. Oxford University Press

More blogs from ɫèAV

  • Two women sit at a desk, one pointing at a document, in a discussion, with a plant and window in the background.

    My lifelong learning journey: Why learning English never stops

    By
    Reading time: 4 minutes

    Why did I want to learn English? When I was 9 years old, I became sick of French at home and I decided to go for the "opposite": English. I fell in love with it the moment I started learning. Though I could not see the point in many activities we were asked to do, such as turning affirmative sentences into negative and questions, or transforming conditional statements, I was good at it and hoped that at some point, I would find the meaningfulness of those exercises.

    Overcoming challenges in English language learning

    I kept on learning English, but the benefits were nowhere to be seen. In my school, classes are monolingual and teachers and students all share the same mother tongue. However, translanguaging was not an option. I even remember being told to forget Spanish, my mother tongue, which was as ridiculous and impossible as asking me to forget I have two legs. Before I finished secondary school, I knew I wanted to take up a career that had English at its core.

    From student to teacher: Finding purpose in teaching English

    I started the translators programme, but soon I saw that it was teaching that I loved. I changed to that and I have never stopped teaching or learning. All the pieces fell into place as I was asked to use English meaningfully, as I started focusing on meaning rather than on grammar. And I made this big learning insight one of the principles and main pillars of teaching. Some heads of school wondered why I would not follow the coursebook. My answer, since then, has been: I teach students, not a book or a syllabus. Because I was focusing on using English with a purpose – using it meaningfully – the results were excellent, and my students were using the language. And they passed the tests they needed to take.

    Teaching English with meaning: Moving beyond the coursebook

    I used coursebooks, as every other teacher did, but continued to make changes that I thought would be beneficial to my learners. As I taught Didactics at university in the Teacher Education Programme, I was invited by some publishing houses to give feedback on new coursebooks. As I was told, the feedback proved to be useful, and I was asked to start modifying international coursebooks to fit the local context and design booklets to provide what was missing in these adaptations, until I was finally invited to write a series for Argentina.

    In all the series I’ve written, my first comment has always been: “This is the result of my experience in several different classrooms, with different students from various backgrounds. This is a series by a teacher and for teachers and their learners. The focus is not on teaching, but on what is necessary for students to learn."

    Flexibility has always been at the core of these series and my teaching as well. Sometimes students need more work on something, and in the Teacher’s book I included several suggestions for further activities, which I called “building confidence activities”.

    Flexible teaching strategies and confidence-building activities

    As I got involved with the GSE, I saw how it can help students learn much better, and how it can support teachers as they help learners. How so? Because it starts with a focus on using English rather than on learning about it, that is, learning about its grammar. I’ve shared my views on it with every colleague I can and it has been the topic of several presentations and national and international conferences. It’s a fantastic resource for both teachers and learners, but also for the wider educational community. When the scales were finally published, I remember thinking, “Oh my, I was born in the wrong century!”

    I am still teaching English – working at schools as a consultant, designing professional development projects and implementing them, and yes, actually working in classrooms, teaching learners. After many years of teaching English, and still loving it, the best advice I can give is this:

    Advice for English teachers

    Teachers, we’re blessed in that we do what we love, and despite its challenges and hard times, teaching is absolutely rewarding. Nothing can compare to the expression on a student’s face when they've "got it".

    Remember to focus on meaning, help learners become aware of what they already know and set a clear learning path that will keep you and them motivated. The GSE is the best resource and companion for this.

  • A teacher sat with young students while they work and hold crayons

    Icebreaker activities for the beginning of the school year

    By
    Reading time: 3 minutes

    The beginning days of school are both exciting and occasionally nerve-wracking for teachers and students alike. Everyone is adjusting to new faces, routines and a fresh environment. As a teacher, you can help make this shift smooth, inviting and enjoyable. One effective way to achieve this is by using icebreaker activities.

    Icebreakers are simple games or activities that help students get to know each other, feel comfortable and start building a positive classroom community. When students feel connected, they are more likely to participate, help each other and enjoy learning. Here are some easy-to-use icebreaker activities and tips for making the beginning of the school year memorable for everyone. Here are just a few ideas for icebreakers you can use in your classroom.

  • A teacher with students stood around him while he is on a tablet

    How AI and the GSE are powering personalized learning at scale

    By
    Reading time: 4 minutes

    In academic ops, we’re always finding the balance between precision and practicality. On one side: the goal of delivering lessons that are level-appropriate, relevant and tied to real learner needs. On the other hand, we juggle hundreds of courses, support teachers, handle last-minute changes and somehow keep the whole system moving without losing momentum or our minds.

    That’s exactly where AI and the Global Scale of English (GSE) have changed the game for us at Bridge. Over the past year, we’ve been using AI tools to streamline lesson creation, speed up course design and personalize instruction in a way that’s scalable and pedagogically sound.

    Spoiler alert: it’s working.

    The challenge: Customization at scale

    Our corporate English learners aren’t just “students”. They’re busy professionals: engineers, sales leads, analysts. They need immediate impact. They have specific goals, high expectations and very little patience for anything that feels generic.

    Behind the scenes, my team is constantly:

    • Adapting content to real company contexts
    • Mapping GSE descriptors to measurable outcomes
    • Designing lessons that are easy for teachers to deliver
    • Keeping quality high across dozens of industries and levels

    The solution: Building personalized courses at scale

    To address this challenge, we developed an internal curriculum engine that blends the GSE, AI and practical, job-focused communication goals into a system that can generate full courses in minutes.

    It is built around 21 workplace categories, including Conflict Resolution, Business Travel and Public Speaking. Each category has five lessons mapped to CEFR levels and GSE descriptors, sequenced to support real skill development.

    Then the fun part: content creation. Using GPT-based AI agents trained on GSE Professional objectives, we feed in a few parameters like:

    • Category: Negotiation
    • Lesson: Staying Professional Under Pressure
    • Skills: Speaking (GSE 43, 44), Reading (GSE 43, 45)

    In return, we get:

    • A teacher plan with clear prompts, instructions and model responses
    • Student slides or worksheets with interactive, GSE-aligned tasks
    • Learning outcomes tied directly to the descriptors

    Everything is structured, leveled and ready to go.

    One Example: “Staying Organized at Work”

    This A2 lesson falls under our Time Management module and hits descriptors like:

    • Reading 30: Can ask for repetition and clarification using basic fixed expressions
    • Speaking 33: Can describe basic activities or events happening at the time of speaking

    Students work with schedules, checklists and workplace vocabulary. They build confidence by using simple but useful language in simulated tasks. Teachers are fully supported with ready-made discussion questions and roleplay prompts.

    Whether we’re prepping for a quick demo or building a full 20-hour course, the outcome is the same. We deliver scalable, teacher-friendly, learner-relevant lessons that actually get used.

    Beyond the framework: AI-generated courses for individual learner profiles

    While our internal curriculum engine helps us scale structured, GSE-aligned lessons across common workplace themes, we also use AI for one-on-one personalization. This second system builds fully custom courses based on an individual’s goals, role, and communication challenges.

    One of our clients, a global mining company, needed a course for a production engineer in field ops. His English level was around B1 (GSE 43 to 50). He didn’t need grammar. He needed to get better at safety briefings, reports and meetings. Fast.

    He filled out a detailed needs analysis, and I fed the data into our first AI agent. It created a personalized GSE-aligned syllabus based on his job, challenges and goals. That syllabus was passed to a second agent, preloaded with the full GSE Professional framework, which then generated 20 complete lessons.

    The course looked like this:

    • Module 1: Reporting project updates
    • Module 2: Supply chain and logistics vocabulary
    • Module 3: Interpreting internal communications
    • Module 4: Coordination and problem-solving scenarios
    • Module 5: Safety presentation with feedback rubric

    From start to finish, the course took under an hour to build. It was tailored to his actual workday. His teacher later reported that his communication had become noticeably clearer and more confident.

    This was not a one-off. We have now repeated this flow for dozens of learners in different industries, each time mapping everything back to GSE ranges and skill targets.

    Why it works: AI + GSE = The right kind of structure

    AI helps us move fast. But the GSE gives us the structure to stay aligned.

    Without it, we’re just generating content. With it, we’re creating instruction that is:

    • Measurable and appropriate for the learner’s level
    • Easy for teachers to deliver
    • Consistent and scalable across programs

    The GSE gives us a shared language for goals, outcomes and progress. That is what keeps it pedagogically sound.

    Final thought

    A year ago, I wouldn’t have believed we could design a 20-lesson course in under an hour that actually delivers results. But now it’s just part of the workflow.

    AI doesn’t replace teaching. It enhances it. And when paired with the GSE, it gives us a way to meet learner needs with speed, clarity, and purpose. It’s not just an upgrade. It’s what’s next.