Teaching people is one of the most complicated branches of society. It is differentiated from other fields with its great demand of responsibility. Accordingly, teaching is a science and it is an art as well. Including language teaching process, there is nothing easy to teach.
Methodology plays a very important role in language teaching. It is characterized in variety of ways. For effective teaching to take a place, a good method must be adopted by teacher. This article provides some suggestions and ideas on how to teach prepositions time and place of English. To clarify for whom these ideas are targeted, it is important to define ESL learners at pre-intermediate level.
Prepositions of place and time are an important part of English language. Using these items learners will be able to build up complex sentences. It is generally known that prepositions are a problem to teach and it is challenge for ESL students to memorize their appropriate usage[1]. As it was mentioned above, there are many types of teaching methods, depending on what information or skill the teacher is trying to convey. When deciding what teaching method to conduct a teacher needs to consider students’ background knowledge, interests, learning styles and needs. Taking into consideration today’s most popular and effective method is Communicative Teaching Method (CTM), while teaching prepositions teacher should follow the demands of this method.
As CTM emphasizes learning language through genuine communication, used method on teaching preposition should help students to communicate appropriately in target language[2].Focusing on a particularly problematic area - teaching prepositions, some practical suggestions below are offered with reference to the prepositions time and place.
Teaching prepositions time and place process consists of following steps:
· Warm up
· Introduction
· Practice
· Production
1. Warm – up. It is not good idea to begin the lesson with saying “Today we are going to learn prepositions of time and place”. To start the lesson with asking the students questions – real questions is effective tool of CTM. The example below illustrates how the teacher and students can have real communicative interactions in English using some classroom language.
Teacher: Where were you born?
Student 1: I was born in Tashkent.
Teacher: Oh, you were born in Tashkent?!
Teacher: When is your birthday?
Student 2: My birthday is on the 21st of October.
Teacher: Your birthday is on the21st of October?!
Teacher repeats all the student’s answers stressing prepositions. If there is an error on using preposition, when repeating student’s answer teacher corrects emphasizing preposition.
2. Introduction. Teacher divides the board into two parts. Prepositions of time take place in the first column and prepositions of place are written in the second column. While writing each preposition teacher uses real example sentences trying to get the students to guess its meaning. For instance,
Preposition of time: Preposition of place:
- on; - in front of;
“Saida was born on the 21st of October” “I’m in front of the board”
- at; - on;
“Lessons start at 8 o’clock” “The pen is on the table”
3. Practice. The process of this section consists of two activities:
Activity1: Working with text. Teacher chooses a small text full of prepositions enough for everyone. Pair work is the most appropriate pattern. Pairs will get texts and circle all the prepositions used in the text. Interactions between two students are checked by monitoring. When time limit is up students will discuss the answers with their partners. Students should be able to know the meaning and difference of prepositions.
Activity2: Fill-in-the gaps. Small group patterns are available for this activity. Some pictures with sentences describing these pictures are distributed to each group. Prepositions are omitted in the sentences. Teacher asks students to fill in the gaps with appropriate prepositions. When time limit is over answers will be checked with the whole class.
4. Production. Checking students’ understanding and differentiating two types of prepositions one more communicative activity is used. Teacher asks students to work in pairs and talk about themselves using all discussed prepositions as it was conducted in the warm-up section. Oral describing the picture or their own room is also one of the good tools.
In conclusion that can make a lesson effective and interesting for ESL learners. Let us look at some below features and points of interesting lesson: variety of activities; activities with game-like elements; extensive use of non-language stimuli (pictures, objects, mime); humor atmosphere; occasional surprises.
Used literature:
1. Ana Piquer-Píriz. 2006. Teaching Prepositions to Very Young Learners. English Teaching Forum ELT Journal 29-33.
2. R. Gwin. A Way to Connect//Sonoon Jer. – 2009. p31
[1]www.busyteacher.org
[2]R. Gwin. A Way to Connect//Sonoon Jer. – 2009. p31
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