6 Useful Vocabulary Websites

The web is full of websites on vocabulary: good, bad and ugly. Here are six of my favourite free vocabulary websites that I think are useful for teachers and students alike:

 

  1. Describing Words 

This website has a simple premise: punch in a noun and you get countless descriptive words, with a helpful sort for ‘frequency’ and for ‘uniqueness’.

 

2. Vocabulary.com

This bumper website has lots of uses, from a dictionary and countless vocabulary questions. My favourite aspect of the website is the lists facility, which has lots of brilliant applications for teachers to use.

 

3. Visuwords.com

This website freely does what it says on the tin: creating interesting graphic visuals for your word choices.

 

4. Online Etymology Dictionary

I use this website a lot in my teaching. With a quick search, you can gain accessible word histories (alongside some very interesting articles).

 

5. Freerice. 

This unique website is a trusty activity for form time or for some vocabulary-related quizzing. The premise of ‘free rice’ sees correct quiz answers activity the World Food Programme donate grains of rice to help end hunger.

6. Word Sift

This website is another very helpful tool that can visualise and ‘sift’ passages of text in helpful ways. From creating word-clouds based on word frequency, to then unpicking key words and connecting them together, this website has lots of interesting applications for vocabulary learning.

 

Do share any of your free favourites in the comments section. If you want to read more about vocabulary in the classroom, my new book ‘Closing the Vocabulary Gap‘ is available at Amazon HERE and Routledge HERE.

2 thoughts on “6 Useful Vocabulary Websites”

  1. Thank you for this article. Very helpful. I will start with Freerice with my Tutor goup and then try to incorporate the other ones into my English teaching. I want to move students from using ‘nice’ to ‘amazing’ and beyond. It stems from reading primarily and I have tired with glossaries but not been consistent enough.
    I am going to start afresh with all my classes over the next 2 half- terms.

  2. Thank you so much for this. It’s so difficult to find a happy medium that provides support for students that are not elementary students and, yet, still need practice with advanced vocabulary, meaning, and visuals!

Leave a Reply

Follow

Get the latest posts delivered to your mailbox:

Scroll to Top