TEACHING
ABOUT PREPOSITIONS
No matter how advanced you ESL students are prepositions
are the final frontier. Why is it that English students have so much trouble
with them?
The fact is that prepositions probably have
more exceptions than any other grammar point. Another problem is that many
prepositions are parts of phrasal verbs, so they don’t follow any rules. You
just have to memorize them.
Take the preposition “in” for example. “In” can
be logical a lot of the time, but wouldn’t it be logical to be “in” an
airplane, rather than “on” an airplane? And yet, we say “on the plane”.
When teaching ESL students prepositions, you
can teach some general rules, but you also have to ask them to memorize certain
expressions like; “on the bus.” And you have to ask them to memorize phrasal
verbs as well. For example, ‘pick up” and “pick out” and just a few hundred
others!
Prepositions
of Time: at, on, in.
We use “at” to designate specific times. * The
train is due in at 12:15 pm.
We use “on” to designate days and dates. * My brother is coming on Monday.
* We are having a party on the 4th of July.
We use “in” for nonspecific times during
a day, a month, a season or a year.
* She likes to jog in the morning.
* It is too
cold to run outside in the winter.
* He started the
job in 1980.
* He
is going to resign in August.
Prepositions of Place: at, on, in.
We use “at” for specific address. * New Horizon English School is located at 43 Station Street.
We use “on” ton designate
names of streets, avenue’s etc. * Her house is on Park Road.
We use “in” for the names of
land areas (towns, countries, states, and continents).
* She lives in Auckland.
* Auckland is in New Zealand.
* New Zealand is in the Pacific.
* Auckland is in New Zealand.
* New Zealand is in the Pacific.
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