Last semester, I led an English club at school for teachers and faculty who wanted to practice English!
We met every Wednesday at 2pm for teatime and snacks. For about an hour, we had English conversation practice time and played games.
Here are some more intermediate and advanced general English games that I liked to play with the teachers or with more high level students. You can find beginner games listed in my post Emergency Beginner English Classroom Games.
★ I marked my favorites/best hits with a star.
List of Games:
Intermediate Games
Alphabet Game ★
A car game I played all the time as a kid. Name a category like fruits or animals. If the category is animals, take turns naming a category for each letter of the alphabet.
When I played as a kid, we played it as a memory game where you had to list every previously said word in order before adding the next letter. For example, “A is for alligator, B is bunny, C is for cat, …” etc.
Taboo
I use this website to play with a group. Players take turns being the “Guesser”. The website will give a list of forbidden words to everyone expect the Guesser. They must give clues to the Guesser without using any of the forbidden words. The Guess guesses as many words as possible in the time limit.
20 Questions
Class game. You can choose a category like animals or foods to make it easier. One person thinks of a word, and everyone else has 20 questions collectively to narrow down what the word is and guess the word as quickly as possible. They must be Yes or No questions only.
Advanced Games
These games I consider advanced because they require much more vocabulary, are more free form, and encourage lots of speaking and creativity.
Scattergories ★
I play using this website. There is a time limit and the website will reveal a set number of random categories and a random letter. You can adjust the list of categories to make the game easier.
Each player must write one word that starts with the given letter for each category. For example, if the letter is “A” and the category is “fruits,” apple and apricot would be acceptable answers.
Fortunately, Unfortunately ★
Similar to the “Yes, and” game, where one person starts a story and the next person adds to it by saying “yes, and…” But in Fortunately, Unfortunately, there’s a twist. After the leader starts the story, the next person starts their sentence with “Fortunately,…” and says a good thing that happened. Then the next person must start with “Unfortunately,…” and say a bad thing that happened. This can lead to much more interesting and dramatic stories!
Yes No Game
In this game, there is one person in the “hot seat.” Everyone else asks that person questions. The person in the hot seat can answer any way they wish, but they MUST NOT say the words “Yes” or “No.” Ask them questions quickly to increase the pressure and make them slip up!
Contact
This is a really fun car game that I’ve learned and forgotten about over and over throughout my life because the rules are complex and I haven’t had many opportunities to play. I played this game with other teachers in my English club, but it’s definitely a harder one to get started. It is a quite advanced, complicated game and is confusing even for native English speakers, but we had so much fun playing once everyone understood the rules!
It’s been explained many times online, so I won’t repeat it here, but here’s a link to a good explanation. If you’ve never heard of this game, you might want to read a few different explanations to really understand the rules and variations. I promise, once you play and get the hang of it, it’s worth the investment.
Hope you learned a new game with this list or were reminded of an old one! There are of course hundreds of these games online but these were the favorites from the English club last year.
Playing these made me want to go back home and try playing with my friends. They make me think of all the ways my friends and I entertained ourselves before streaming and social media. I think we learned more about each other playing simple group games like this than doing anything else.
Love,
B.
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