500 Ideas and Activities for Teaching Vocabulary

Stacey H. Hughes, Fiona Mauchline and Julie Moore

Pavilion, ISBN: 9781912755264

Vocabulary is central to language teaching. I welcome this comprehensive, 255-page resource book. It is divided into six sections, including classroom activities, features of words (like collocation) and specific contexts such as teaching young learners and dyslexic students. The book includes well-known techniques like mime, Pelmanism, using study cards and creating ‘spider grams’ and is up-to-date on apps and corpus tools. One standout unit is ‘Online tools for analysing vocabulary’, which describes fascinating sites like the ‘N-gram viewer’ which shows how usage of a word has changed over time. The substantial Appendix contains useful photocopiable worksheets. This A4 spiral-bound book should appeal to new and experienced teachers alike. You can dip in for bite-sized activities or work through more systematically. The authors’ wide-ranging experience shines through.