Clothes in English: Vocabulary List with Pronunciation

Practice on screen

Look at the picture or number and choose the right English word. Ten questions each round.

How to teach it

1. 1. Dress the teddy bear

   Keep a small pile of real clothes or doll clothes. Say, "Put the hat on the bear," and let the child choose the right piece and dress the toy. Take turns, so the child also gives the instructions and says the words out loud.

2. 2. Pack a suitcase

   Name a place or a season: "We are going to the beach. What do we pack?" The child picks clothes from a pile or from pictures and says each word as it goes into the suitcase. Change the trip to snow and pack again.

3. 3. Laundry line game

   Hang a string between two chairs and clip on socks, a shirt, a scarf or paper cutouts. Say a word and the child touches that item. Then the child pulls one down and asks, "What is it?" You answer in a full sentence: "It is a sock."

4. 4. Describe the outfit

   Show a picture of a person, or look at the child in the mirror, and describe what they wear: "You are wearing a green sweater and blue jeans." Next, the child describes you. This joins the clothes words to the color words the child already knows.

5. 5. Get dressed in the morning

   Use English during the daily routine. Hold up each item and say its name while the child puts it on: "Put on your socks. Put on your shoes." Repeating the same short phrases every day is easier than a long lesson.

6. 6. Weather dress-up

   Show three pictures: a sunny day, a rainy day and a snowy day. Ask, "What do you wear?" and let the child pick clothes for each one. This links clothes to the weather and gives a natural reason to say the new words.

Common mistakes

• Saying "a pant" or "a jean"

  Pants, jeans, shorts and glasses are plural words. Say "My pants are blue" and "These jeans are new." To count them, use a pair of: "I have two pairs of shorts." The same is true for sunglasses and scissors.

• Mixing up wear and put on

  Wear describes what is on your body now: "I wear a coat today." Put on is the action of getting dressed: "I put on my coat." Wrong: "I am putting on a red dress all day." Right: "I am wearing a red dress today."

• Using the wrong word for American or British English

  American pants are British trousers, and in Britain pants means underwear. American sneakers are British trainers, a sweater is a jumper, and pajamas are pyjamas. Pick one set of words for your lessons and keep to it.

• Forgetting that socks and shoes come in pairs

  We usually say "my socks" and "my shoes," with an -s, even when we talk about all of them. For one, say "a sock" or "a shoe." For two, say "a pair of socks." Wrong: "I put on my shoe" when you mean both shoes.

• Using a instead of an

  Use a before a consonant sound and an before a vowel sound: a shirt, a hat, an umbrella. Uniform starts with a y sound, so it is a uniform, not an uniform. Check the sound of the word, not only the first letter.