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Lupu Silvia Elena

MA in ELT, 1st year

Teaching Prepositions Difficulties and Solutions

One of the difficulties English Language Learners (ELL) encounter in the process of
language acquisition is learning the prepositions. There are some reasons for which
prepositions are a problem in learning the language, but there are also solutions and
methods that can help students get through it.
As the Oxford Dictionary says, the preposition is a word usually preceding a noun or
pronoun and expressing a relation to another word or element in the clause. In other
words, the prepositions can describe the location or the relation between two items.
There are approximately seventy prepositions in English and they are quite difficult to
be recognized by L2 learners, especially in oral speech. Most of the English
prepositions are monosyllabic, such as by, for, or at, so they are hardly detectable in
rapid, oral speech. ELLs usually make confusions when they learn the prepositions and
they use them wrong.
Just as prepositions are hard to understand, they are also hard to teach, especially to
second language learners. The same preposition can have different meanings in
different languages. For example, for a Romanian learner to and at can be translated
with a single preposition, la. That is why a Romanian student can tend to translate Ne
vedem la 10 with See you to 10 instead of See you at 10.
Some English teachers go with the easy way and they teach prepositions using the
Traditional Approach. They explain the grammar category while the students have to
study each preposition individually. Using this method, the teachers only get some really
frustrated students who do not know how to use prepositions within a context.
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Lupu Silvia Elena


MA in ELT, 1st year

The approach that I would use in teaching English prepositions is the Collocation
Approach. By this method, students can learn prepositions by using chunks or
collocations that contain certain prepositions. Instead of teaching prepositions
individually, teachers can use phrasal verbs and other phrases that can show students
the meaning of each and every preposition.
Researches show that L2 learners naturally process groups of words as a single unit.
Certain prepositions can only be applied in one form. For example, two friends can meet
on Thursday at 8:00, but they cannot meet at Thursday on 8:00. The learner will not
necessarily understand why temporal prepositions can be used only with certain words
or phrase, and they will tend to use other prepositions, even if they are spatial. That is
why the Collocation Approach might be the best solution for an ELL to understand better
the prepositions and to use them properly.
There are some types of exercises proposed by teachers who use the Collocation
Approach. One of them is for prepositions used in sentences:
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Michael is born .. 1987.


I am looking .. my book.
She went to a walk .. the park.
The homework wasnt done . Her.
I am allergic .. seeds.

Another way to learn how to use prepositions is by placing them in idioms:


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She was tired .waiting for him.


I am good .playing piano.
He hasnt run .ages.
She dreams .. becoming a teacher.
Mary has troubles .her new cooking machine.

Phrasal verbs are idiomatic expressions, combining verbs and prepositions to make
new verbs whose meaning is often not obvious, especially for ELLs. Phrasal verbs are
widely used in both written and spoken English, and new ones are formed all the time
as they are a flexible way of creating new terms. Teaching prepositions is a good reason
to also introduce phrasal verbs. This way, the students will make connections with their
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Lupu Silvia Elena


MA in ELT, 1st year

previous knowledge about English prepositions. An example of exercise using phrasal


verbs is:
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Sally is going to look the children while their parents are gone.
After I took a look at the Chinese vase I passed it to the art dealer.
You should put your jacket, it is cold outside.
Turn .. the lights if you leave the room.
When the police arrived, the diamond was already take ..

There is no best method to teach English preposition, considering it is such a vast


subject. But there are exercises and texts that underline the meaning of a preposition
within a context. This way ELLs can discover patterns in the ways the prepositions are
used. Every student has a different style of learning and teachers must take advantage
of the resources that provide the various meanings of prepositions and how they relate
to one another.

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