My deaf and hard of hearing EFL students tend to completely ignore prepositions. I don’t take it as personal affront since they demonstrate an equal lack of interest in using them in their mother tongue as well.

You don’t need prepositions when you use sign language.  It’s all clear without them.

When they do use them there is language interference because many prepositions are used differently in different languages (this year I have students who speak or sign Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, Amharic and French at home!). For example, in English you live “on” a street but in Hebrew you live “in” a street.

I know the lovely video below could be used for many many other things (feelings, wishes for the future) but I use videos for what I need and it does a good job of highlighting  the direction of movement.

Especially as I’ve never had the opportunity to teach “bump into” before!

All this doesn’t mean that we can’t discuss the other issues as they come up. I’m just not going to include them on the video lesson.

One more thing.

My teenage students love romantic videos…

*** Many thanks to the amazing Regina Shraybman for finding this video for me!

*** For companion flashcards – see this post:  here: https://visualisingideas.edublogs.org/2016/10/13/flashcards-for-romance/

There are two versions below. The first option offers mutliple choice options and is easier.

 

A reader, Julia Mor, kindly organized the material into a worksheet format. Thank you Julia! Click on the link to download it.

preposition-romance-worksheet