When being asked about the way of learning English vocabulary, most students in our
classes at the Distance Education Center said they just copied new words provided by
teachers or looked up words in the dictionary. Many of them marked or underlined words
they did not know in their textbooks and noted the meaning in Vietnamese. Some students
noted the time they had to copy lines and lines of new words in their notebooks which were
forgotten soon. "It was so boring. I hated learning new words that way!". Sometimes,
students asked many questions regarding learning vocabulary like "Teacher, how can I
remember words and their meanings quickly and for a long time?", "How can I use words
properly in different contexts?", "Can you tell me an easy and simple way to retain the
vocabulary that I have learnt?" etc. (Khuat, Teaching journal, March, 2003). All of the
learners expressed their wish to learn vocabulary effectively in more interesting ways than
the traditional ways that they knew. What we wanted to know was whether vocabulary
games worked or no