Halloween Vocabulary for Adult ESL Students: 5 Topics, 40 Words (Free PDF)

Halloween vocabulary lists are mostly written for children: pumpkin, ghost, witch, bat. Your adult students learned those words years ago, or can learn them in five minutes. What they are missing is the language around the holiday: how to describe a costume, a decorated street and a film that left them uneasy, how to explain their own family's November traditions in English, and the expressions their colleagues use at work in March without thinking of Halloween at all.

Below are five Halloween vocabulary topics for adult classes, from A1 to C1. Each one has eight words with a plain definition and an example sentence an adult would actually say, a way to present it, and a page in the free Halloween Vocabulary Pack. Each topic ends with a lesson from our library that takes the same words into a full hour. Teach one topic as a warmer, or one a day in Halloween week.

1. Costumes

A1-A2Beginner

This is the entry point. Every word is a thing students can point at, and every adult has seen a vampire, a devil or a witch at a party or in a shop window. The grammar comes for free: has got, is wearing and is holding are exactly what beginners need to describe people.

How to present it

Show four or five photos of people in costumes and ask what each person is wearing before you give any words. Students will reach for what they know and come up short, which is the moment to hand out page 2. They label the costume party alone and check with a partner. Then they decide who is who from six sentences, like She is holding a broom, and finish with three sentences about a costume of their own.

For true beginners, What Are You Gonna Be For Halloween? (A1-A2) has students watch people choose costumes and rank the looks. If your class still needs the basics, our free Halloween Vocabulary worksheet (A2-B1) teaches the fourteen core words, from costume and mask to haunted house, with riddles and a party invitation. One level up, Spooky Costume (A2-B1, free) asks what a costume says about the person wearing it.

2. Decorating the House

A2-B1Lower Intermediate

Decoration vocabulary is more useful than it looks, because almost all of it transfers. A student who can describe a decorated porch can describe a house, a street or a photo, and describing pictures is part of most speaking exams. Lawn, doorstep and porch stay useful long after the plastic tombstones go back in the garage.

How to present it

Put two photos side by side, one house decorated heavily and one barely at all, and ask students to find the differences. They will need the words before they can do it, so hand out page 3 after a minute or two. Students match the eight words to their meanings, then find five differences between house A and house B with there is and there are. The last exercise puts five of the words into sentences. Finish with the real question: would you decorate your home like house A?

Halloween Decorations (B1-B2) takes these words into a listening about how Americans decorate their homes, then asks whether all that spending is worth it. For a lighter class, Pumpkin Recipe (A2-B1) follows a video recipe for roasted pumpkin and teaches quantity phrases like a pinch of.

3. Describing Fear

B1-B2Intermediate

This is the topic worth teaching even if you never mention Halloween. English has an unusual number of near-synonyms for frightening, and students who only know scary sound flat. The differences are hard and useful: a silent street is eerie, the man staring at the bus stop is creepy, and a true crime story is chilling.

How to present it

Write creepy, eerie, chilling and unsettling on the board and ask students to explain the difference. They will not agree, which is the point. Then hand out page 4. Students tick the best word for six situations, then replace four long, flat phrases with one strong word each. They finish by writing about a time they were on edge or got goosebumps, and tell a partner the story.

The words land best inside a story. Ghost Stories (A2-B1, free) has students read eerie tales and tell one of their own with the past simple and past continuous. At B1-B2, Real-Life Vampires? gives them a genuinely unsettling article to react to. For strong classes, Tales of Horror (B2-C1) is a podcast of real people's frightening experiences, and Horror (B2-C1) asks the question behind all of it: why do people enjoy being frightened?

4. Traditions in Europe and Latin America

B1-B2Intermediate

The comparison topic, and the one that saves the lesson when nobody in the room celebrates Halloween. Many adults in Europe and Latin America never went trick-or-treating, but almost every family has a way to remember the people who have died. A Mexican student knows exactly what goes on the altar, and a Polish student knows the cemetery on November 1. What they lack is the English to explain it.

How to present it

Start with a question, not a word list: what does your family do at the start of November? Then hand out page 5. Five people from Oaxaca, Kraków, Madrid, Galway and Manchester each describe their tradition in a short text, and students fill the gaps with the eight words. Then they decide who says each of six sentences and write two sentences about their own family. In a mixed class, pair students from different countries for the last step.

Festivals of Fall (A2-B1) reads an article about four fall festivals around the world, which is this topic at a lower level. For advanced classes, Halloween Canceled (B2-C1) follows a news report on whether Halloween should be canceled and ends in a class debate. When your students want to keep talking, our 30 Halloween discussion questions pair well with this topic.

5. Spooky Expressions for Every Month

B2-C1Upper Intermediate to Advanced

These eight expressions use the words of graves and ghosts, but adults use them all year, mostly at work. A colleague who says the printer gave up the ghost or that a project is a dead end is not talking about Halloween. That is why they are worth teaching in October: the season gives you a reason to introduce them, and students keep using them long after.

How to present it

Give the expressions without their meanings and ask students to guess from the words. Bored to death is easy. Skeleton staff and a dead giveaway are not, and those are the ones students will remember. On page 6, they complete a team chat from the end of October, fix one wrong word in four sentences and write two true sentences about their own work or studies.

For the ten classic Halloween idioms, from a skeleton in the closet to the graveyard shift and over my dead body, our Halloween Idioms worksheet (B1-B2) has students match them, fix them and rewrite plain news headlines with them. None of its idioms repeat the eight above, so the two work as a pair. For storytelling, Halloween Pranks (B2-C1) follows a radio story about pranks that went wrong and practices narrative tenses.

Turning the word lists into practice

A word list is not a lesson. Three things turn these into one.

• Push students to produce. Matching a word to a definition is recognition, and it is gone within a week. Every page of the pack ends with students writing something true about their own costume, home, fears, family or work, which is the part that sticks.
• Teach the differences. The fear topic is the clearest case. Knowing that creepy, eerie and unsettling all mean roughly frightening is worth very little. Knowing which one fits a silent street is worth a lot.
• Recycle across the week. If you teach costumes on Monday, ask for fangs and a cape again in the fear story on Wednesday. Words that come back three times stay.

For a ten-minute warmer before any of these topics, the games in Last-Minute Halloween ESL Activities need no preparation at all.

Mistakes your students will make

Halloween lessons by level

To plan the whole week, our 12 Halloween ESL lessons for adults post sorts these lessons by level, by the grammar they teach and by the kind of group you have.

Final thoughts

Only the first topic is really about Halloween. The rest are a street to describe, the difference between near-synonyms, a student's own family traditions and eight expressions that work in any month. October gives you the reason to teach them. Your students will still be saying eerie, on edge and a dead end in February.