Puzzle games are a great way for adult learners to test their skills. Word searches and crossword puzzles each challenge players to identify appropriate English words. Word searches are a bit more basic, challenging adults to find English words in a jumble. However, crossword puzzles are more advanced, requiring players to be able to read and comprehend the clues and then formulate the appropriate answer to fill in the blocks.
Matching and memory games are perhaps the most versatile types of games for learning English. You can use them for many different facets of the language: vocabulary, prepositions, clauses, subject verb agreement and more. Some examples of matching games can include having photos of items and requiring players to match the word with the appropriate image, sentences missing prepositions on flashcards and requiring players to match the appropriate preposition to each sentence, or having a list of independent and dependent clauses and requiring players to correctly categorize the types of clauses.
Role playing games are especially helpful when working on conversational skills in English. These games can take many forms and be applied to many different situations. For instance, when working on vocabulary you may ask your players to partner up and have one person pretend to order items from a restaurant or have a player ask for directions. You can also require players to mimic job hunting, asking the date and time, visiting a doctor or shopping for clothing.
Providing stories or paragraphs of writing and challenging your players to fill in the blanks can be a fun way to challenge them to use their critical thinking skills and context clues to use the most appropriate vocabulary for a sentence or paragraph. You can also make variations of this game by having students write fill-in-the-blank paragraphs for each other and keeping score by who picked the most accurate vocabulary.