The best games to play in order to enhance the vocabulary in a fun way is to play word games. These games are loved by many and provide both entertainment and education. Word games are best to challenge and test your language skills and in addition to that, it comes with many mental health benefits too. So if you love reading literature or playing with words and are stressed, word games can prove to be a perfect way to destress yourself.
Benefits of Playing Word Games
A research paper titled “Improving Students’ Vocabulary Achievement through Word Game” revealed that playing word games helped the students memorise the new vocabularies better and made them more interested in learning new words. Also, learning new words and using them in daily conversation can make you feel smart, thereby increasing your confidence.
Apart from enhancing vocabulary, word games have many more benefits. For instance, word games can help you to destress by losing yourself in the game. In addition, winning a word game after facing its challenges is supposed to release dopamine, a feel-good hormone.
There are multiple word games available today which support multiplayer modes. Playing this game with your friends will enhance your socialising skill, which is now all the more important due to the social distancing norms. Also, it is a productive way of getting together with your friends, which can enhance your mood and remove the guilt that you are wasting your time. A report on social identity and gaming by Guegan, Moliner and Cuisine has proved that group phenomena in the virtual context are very similar to the real-life social processes and the social identity created in the multiplayer online games direct impact on the user.
Playing word games also has proven to be a good mental workout. Word games improve the left hemisphere of the brain in right-handed people. The left side of the brain controls both the reasoning and language skills and is in charge of the brain’s cognitive functioning. So by playing the word games, you would be strengthening your brain in a fun way and not being involved in any traditional boring setup to improve yourself.
Health Benefits Of Popular Word Games
- Word Crosswords
Word Crosswords is a popular word game where the user can improve their vocabulary daily. It is a classic word game that is still entertaining for both young and adult people. Crossword has proved to be helpful, especially for people who have Alzheimer and Dementia, to boost their mental ability. A report titled “Association of Crossword Puzzle Participation with Memory Decline in Persons Who Develop Dementia” has found that playing word games have delayed the process of memory decline amongst the elderly.
- Scrabble
Scrabble is a popular board game invented in 1938 by Alfred Mother Butts. Playing Scrabble improves cognitive skills and trains the mind. While playing Scrabble, it is recommended to use a dictionary for learning new words and further, online resources like Scrabble Word Finder can be used for winning this game.
- Word Search
Playing word search games is especially helpful for the kids for developing recognition and learning the spelling of new words. This game increases language fluency and helps the users to increase concentration and focus.
- Words With Friends
Dr. Ronan Factora of Cleveland Clinic has accepted that playing games like Words With Friends stimulates the brain by challenging you. As the level of the game increases, the challenge also increases and this challenge is responsible for creating new connections in the brain.
- Duolingo
Duolingo is a fun app to learn new languages with fun bite-sized lessons. Apart from languages like Chinese, French, Japanese, Korean and Spanish, one can also use Duolingo for enhancing their English. A study titled “Bilingualism for Dementia: Neurological Mechanisms Associated With Functional and Structural Changes in the Brain” has revealed that learning new languages can increase connectivity in different brain areas.
There are a few reasons why you should start engaging your brain in a word game. It is fun and entertaining and provides a great workout to your brain. In addition to word games, you can also play puzzle games like Sudoku for the overall development of your brain.
