Vocabulary study doesn’t have to only mean sitting at your desk memorizing long lists of words. The best vocabulary study practice gets you involved in your study interactively, and keeps an element of fun and play in your practice. Here are two of the games we like best, to play alone or with friends.

www.freerice.com

This free on-line game is an excellent way to learn interesting and uncommon words. The words are presented to you one at a time, and you’re given four choices for the correct definition of each word. When we looked at the site today, the first word set we were given was this:

muggy means:
basic
steamy
trustworthy
nutritious

Can you pick the right answer? It’s steamy; muggy weather is hot and humid, sometimes so hot that water from a lawn sprinkler evaporates right up off the concrete sidewalk in a cloud of steam. It’s all right if you didn’t get the word the first time – the word will go back in rotation and you’ll get another chance at it. The great thing about this site is that it constantly challenges you with more and more difficult words, and tracks your progress as you go. In addition, there’s an audio link for each vocabulary word, so you can listen to it as well as learn how to define it.

But perhaps the best thing about the site is that it’s run by a philanthropic organization which will donate ten grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program each time you answer correctly! That might not seem like a lot, but it adds up quickly. Help yourself as well as others and check out the FreeRice site today.

Scrabble (www.scrabble.com)

From international tournaments to family game nights, Scrabble has been helping people learn vocabulary words since 1948. Using the seven letters you draw from the pile of tiles, you form words on a board, using the other words that are there in a crossword-puzzle format, while trying to score as many points as possible. This game challenges your vocabulary-building skills by presenting you with only the letters you need to form words, and not the words themselves, which is an excellent way to test your memory. We recommend that you buy a Scrabble dictionary (you can get them at most used book stores) to use instead of a regular dictionary – it will be much easier to look up words that way, since only “legal” words are in it, and the definition list is pared down to the basics. However, if there’s a word you’re not familiar with, and you’re curious about its usage or history, write it down and look it up later. Play the board game version, or one of the many on-line forums.

Tomorrow we’ll look at more games you can use to build your vocabulary.