The Vocabulary Bowl is the largest academic competition and learners around the world are invited to participate, even if they aren’t part of a school or class!

Mastering words on Vocabulary.com contributes to your Vocabulary Bowl points and propels you up the leaderboards!  All learners with a paid subscription are automatically registered for the competition, so here’s everything you need to know to compete.

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The Vocabulary Bowl leaderboards reflect the total words mastered by schools, classes, and individual learners during the contest season. Mastery is earned by answering multiple questions correctly on a given word. Two activities on Vocabulary.com contribute to word mastery, VocabTrainer and Practice. Each word you master through these activities is equal to a point in the Vocabulary Bowl.

VocabTrainer

VocabTrainer is the easiest way to get started on word mastery. Simply log in to your account, click VocabTrainer on the top navigation bar, and start learning!

VocabTrainer automatically selects personalized questions while focusing on your trouble words and knowledge gaps. Set a personal goal for yourself and try to get in at least 15 minutes of VocabTrainer per day!

Find your learning achievements, Vocabulary Bowl ranking, and Vocabulary.com activities on your learner dashboard to start mastering words and climb the leaderboard.

Practice

Master words through Practice activities to earn points for the Vocabulary Bowl! Practicing a list provides multiple question types for each word in the list, leading to word mastery. These are some of the best ways to find and practice the words you want to learn.

  • Just for Fun: From Appetite for Instruction to the Wide Words of Sports, we have something for everyone.
  • Learner resource center: Build essential vocabulary and explore our most popular resources.
  • Test prep: Get yourself ready for your upcoming college-level exams while mastering words and earning points for the Vocab Bowl! We have test prep programs for the SAT, ACT, GRE, and TOEFL complete with lists and quizzes to prepare you for test day.
  • InstaList: Don’t see a list you want to learn? Create your own with InstaList - paste up to 100 pages of text and we’ll create a list for you in seconds!

After you complete a Practice activity, you can click on Finish Mastery to continue answering questions on the words from the Practice list. You can also find the Finish Mastery option on any list on your My lists page.  Words that you struggle with in Practice activities are automatically added to your VocabTrainer personalized learning plan.

Start word mastery