There are fun ways to improve your vocabulary and spelling skills that don’t involve reading the dictionary or thesaurus. You can accomplish the task playing word games or puzzles, and you can do it by yourself, making these good ways for anyone to increase her vocabulary.
Puzzles that are good for increasing vocabulary include:
Crosswords. Traditional crosswords, with their up and down interlocking words are a great way to beef up your knowledge of words and meanings. You get spelling help, too, as letters may appear in random positions in your word to help you.
Crostics. Also known as acrostics, crostics are puzzles where clues to words are given, much like in a crossword. In this puzzle, however, the answers are put in a grid that forms a quote.
The fun thing about these puzzles is that you can work from the clues to the quote, and from the quote to the clues, filling in words or letters. Crostics give you a good ability to recognize words from only a few letters, and a lot of alternate definitions.
I learned the word natatorium working crostics. In the simplest form, that’s an indoor swimming pool.
Anagram Magic Squares. Anagrams are words where the letters of one word can be rearranged to form another word, as in hearty/earthy. Anagram Magic Squares are puzzles with a list of clues and anagrams. As you answer the clues, the first letter of each new word forms a quote. This is another puzzle where you can work from the clues or the quote to find the new word.
The puzzles mentioned here can be found in mixed puzzle books found at newsstands or bookstores; Penny Press publishes dedicated books of Crostics and Anagram Magic Squares.
Online word games that are good for increasing vocabulary:
Text Twist. Text Twist is a free online game that’s a really fun way to increase your vocabulary. In this timed game you get scrambled letters and have to form as many words of 3 or more letters as you can from those letters. The game shows you how many words of each letter count there are, so you know what you’re still looking for.
Bookworm. Bookworm is another free word game where you get a “board” of letters that you string together to make words. Longer words get more points, and like in the game of Scrabble, there are bonus letters and words.
This game can be addictive, and because it isn’t timed, you can play as long as you like.
Word Monaco. A variation on the card game solitaire, Word Monaco turns over cards with letters and you have to make words with them, using as many of the cards as you can. There are numerous levels to this game, with each becoming slightly more difficult.
You can move your cards over and over again, forming a nearly endless number of words as you try to use all the cards, and that’s part of what makes this a really fun way to increase your vocabulary.
All the online games mentioned here are available at Yahoo! Games, and may be available at other gaming sites as well.
