Random Tools for Language Teachers
For ESL and EFL teachers, modern-languages teachers, and anyone preparing vocabulary practice for a class or a tutee. · 11 tools
Every tool on this page starts from words you supply. That is the deliberate limit: the vocabulary a class needs comes from your syllabus, your coursebook or the topic you are on this week, and no generator can guess it. What takes the time is everything after the list exists — laying it out as a gap-fill, scrambling it, hiding it in a grid, getting the answer key right, and printing cards whose backs line up with their fronts. These do that part, in the browser, with no account and nothing uploaded, which matters when the list is a photograph of a page you are not allowed to send anywhere.
Working from a passage
Both of these take a text rather than a list. Run a passage through the statistics tool first if you are unsure it is the right level — average sentence length and the count of distinct words tell you more about difficulty than a word count does — and then turn the passage you settle on into a gap-fill.
- Text Statistics GeneratorCounts words, sentences and distinct vocabulary in a passage, with every figure re-derived from the text and the ratios kept honest.
- Cloze Worksheet GeneratorTurns any passage into a gap-fill sheet, with a word bank if you want one and an answer key that provably puts the passage back together.
Worksheets from your own word list
Paste the week's vocabulary and get a printable exercise with a key. These differ in what they ask a learner to do with the word — unjumble it, find it, or spell it letter by letter — so one list can carry a whole lesson without the class doing the same task three times.
- Word Scramble GeneratorScramble your own spelling or vocabulary list into an unjumbling worksheet, with an answer key one tap away.
- Word Search GeneratorMake a printable word search from your own word list, with a grid size and difficulty you choose and an answer key that is actually correct.
- Spelling Worksheet GeneratorMissing-letter, unscramble, ordering and syllable sheets where no question can be answered two different ways.
Flashcards and letter work
For drilling rather than written practice. The sheet generator solves the duplex printing problem — backs are mirrored so each answer lands behind its own question — and the draw session runs a set on screen without replacement, so no card repeats until every card has been seen.
- Flashcard Sheet GeneratorLays your cards out for double-sided printing, mirroring the backs so every answer lands behind its own question.
- Flashcard Draw SessionWorks through your own flashcards without replacement, so every card comes up before any card repeats.
- Build a Word GeneratorPrintable make-a-word sheets: a set of letters, lines to write on, and an answer sheet listing the words those letters can spell — including the one that uses every letter.
Getting the class talking
Speaking practice needs a prompt that cannot be answered in one word, which is the whole difficulty of setting it. Two of these supply open questions; the third is a describing game with the easy words banned, which is the constraint that forces a learner to reach for the vocabulary they have rather than the one word they were taught.
- Discussion Question GeneratorAn open-ended question to start a classroom discussion or small-group conversation.
- Conversation Starter GeneratorAn open-ended question designed to spark a real conversation, not small talk.
- Describe Without Saying GeneratorA word to get your team to say, plus the obvious words you are banned from using — the mechanic that makes describing genuinely hard.
Getting the most out of these
Three things worth knowing. Nothing here saves your word list — closing the tab clears it, so keep the list in a document you can paste from and you can rebuild any sheet in seconds. Most of these have a seed box: type the same word twice and you get the identical sheet back, which is how you reprint for the pupil who was absent without setting them a different exercise. And the answer keys are generated from the same pass that made the questions rather than written separately, so a sheet and its key cannot drift apart.
Other collections
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- Random Tools for PartiesIcebreakers, party games and conversation starters for groups that have gone quiet.