Teaching Prepositions to ELLs: Why Rules Don't Work and Chunks Do

I'm good in math. On Saturday in the morning at 8 o'clock. I'm afraid from spiders. If you teach ELLs, these are not unusual sentences. They're the daily reality of preposition errors.

Here's the thing: preposition rules in English are mostly arbitrary. There's no rule that explains why we say interested in but fascinated by. Or on Monday but in May. Or at home but in the house.

This post lays out the alternative: a chunking-and-collocation approach that treats prepositions as vocabulary, not grammar. Based on Lewis's Lexical Approach (1993), Hill and Lewis's Dictionary of Selected Collocations (1997), and 10 years of classroom application.

Why Rules Fail

English prepositions are messy because they evolved from Old English without systematic logic. Some patterns exist (in for enclosed spaces, on for surfaces, at for points), but exceptions dominate.

Examples of why rules break:
- in the morning, but at night, on Monday morning.
- good at math, good in school, good on the team.
- afraid of dogs, worried about dogs, scared by dogs.

Trying to teach these as rules drives students (and you) crazy. Teaching them as chunks works.

The Chunking Approach

Treat preposition + word combinations as vocabulary items. Depend on is one vocabulary item, not two words. Interested in is one item. Good at is one item.

When students learn the chunk, they don't have to generate the preposition — they retrieve it as part of the vocabulary item.

This matches how native speakers actually use prepositions. We don't consciously apply rules; we retrieve patterns.

The 100 Chunks That Cover Most Errors

There's a useful research finding: a relatively small set of preposition collocations accounts for the vast majority of preposition errors in ELL writing. Hill and Lewis estimate around 100 high-frequency chunks deliver the most return.

High-leverage chunks for academic writing:

• agree with, agree on, agree to
• depend on
• consist of
• result in, result from
• contribute to
• focus on
• based on
• responsible for
• familiar with
• aware of
• capable of
• similar to, different from
• increase in, decrease in
• good at, bad at
• interested in
• afraid of, worried about
• think about, think of
• talk to, talk with, talk about
• belong to
• suffer from

Teach 3–5 per week across 30 weeks. By year-end, students have internalized the chunks that matter most.

A 5-Minute Daily Preposition Routine

Min 1: Display 3 chunks of the week. Read them aloud.
Min 2: Display 3 sentences using the chunks. Students read aloud.
Min 3: Students write 3 sentences using the chunks.
Min 4: Pair share + correct.
Min 5: Add the chunks to the class anchor chart.

Repeat for the rest of the week with different sentences but the same 3 chunks. Spaced repetition builds retention.

The Class Anchor Chart

Create a permanent wall chart organized by category:

• Time prepositions: at, in, on (with examples)
• Place prepositions: at, in, on (with examples)
• Verb + preposition chunks: depend on, agree with, etc.
• Adjective + preposition chunks: good at, afraid of, etc.

Add 3–5 chunks per week. The chart becomes a permanent reference students consult when writing.

Activities That Build Chunking

Activity 1: Chunk Completion

I'm depending ___ you to help me. Students fill in the preposition. Five chunks per session.

Activity 2: Chunk Sorting

Provide 30 mixed phrases. Students sort by preposition (all the on phrases together, all the of phrases together). Patterns emerge.

Activity 3: Chunk Memory Game

Card matching. One side has the verb (depend), the other side has the preposition (on). Students match.

Activity 4: Chunk in a Sentence

Each student gets a chunk and must use it in a sentence about a topic of their choice. Quick share-out.

Activity 5: Error Correction with Chunks

Display 10 sentences with preposition errors. Students correct them by recalling the right chunk.

Teaching Spatial Prepositions

Spatial prepositions (in, on, at, under, behind, between, in front of) are easier to teach because they're partly rule-governed.

Best approach: Total Physical Response. Put the book on the desk. Put the book under the desk. Stand behind the chair. Students physically respond. Five minutes per day for a week builds rock-solid spatial preposition vocabulary.

This works especially well for newcomers. Combine with photos and arrow diagrams.

Teaching Time Prepositions

Time prepositions follow a partial pattern that's worth teaching explicitly:

at + clock time (at 3:00), at night, at noon, at midnight
in + month, year, season, decade, time of day (in May, in 2026, in winter, in the morning)
on + day of week, date (on Monday, on March 15)

There are exceptions, but this covers 80% of cases. Drill it with calendars and clocks.

L1 Transfer Notes

Spanish speakers often confuse en (used for in, on, at) with the three English options. Targeted drilling helps.

Mandarin speakers often drop prepositions entirely (I live New York). Address with awareness work first.

Arabic speakers transfer Arabic preposition patterns directly, leading to combinations like afraid from (instead of afraid of). Chunk teaching helps directly.

Russian / Polish speakers have case marking that does some of the work English prepositions do. Expect strange combinations until chunks are learned.

What Research Says

*Lewis's Lexical Approach (1993)* argues that language is fundamentally chunks, not words + rules. Empirical work since has largely supported this for L2 learners.

Boers and Lindstromberg's 2008 work on chunk-based vocabulary instruction shows large effect sizes for academic English collocations, including preposition combinations.

*Nation's Learning Vocabulary in Another Language (2nd ed., 2013)* identifies collocational fluency as a key marker of advanced L2 proficiency.

Common Mistakes Teachers Make

Mistake 1: Teaching prepositions as a unit. Prepositions are too messy for unit-based instruction. They need to be drip-fed daily across the year.

Mistake 2: Marking every preposition error. Pick 2–3 chunks per week. Mark only those. Other preposition errors get ignored.

Mistake 3: Explaining 'why' a preposition is right. Often there's no satisfying answer. Tell students: That's the chunk. Memorize it.

Mistake 4: Not using anchor charts. Without a visible reference, students can't self-correct.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long until students master prepositions? It's not really 'mastery' — it's incremental accumulation of chunks. Expect years.

Should I teach grammar terminology like 'preposition'? Yes, briefly, so students can talk about errors. But the focus stays on the chunks.

What if a student already over-uses one preposition? Address the chunk specifically. You wrote 'good in math.' The chunk is 'good AT math.'

How do I assess preposition knowledge? Cloze tests with the prepositions removed. Score for accuracy on taught chunks.

Does this work for newcomers? Yes, but start with the 20 most concrete spatial and temporal prepositions before moving to abstract collocations.

Where to Go Next

Three concrete next steps:

1. Build your anchor chart. Start with 10 chunks this week.
2. Run the 5-minute daily routine with 3 chunks per week.
3. Scale the practice. Grammar Spy Membership includes a preposition chunk library that adapts to each student's specific gaps and drips chunks across the year.

Prepositions are not a unit. They're a vocabulary project that runs for years. Treat them as chunks, drip-feed them daily, and watch student writing get measurably more native-like.