Prepositions and Dictionaries

“I’m on it.” “Get on with it.” “I can’t talk now, 'Ugly Betty' is on.” “I don’t know if I can carry on.”

Ugh! Prepositions have so many uses. They are in idioms and phrasal verbs, and even when used as a simple preposition, they can have so many different meanings. ESL cloze exercises can be used to help students reinforce some uses of prepositions, but for some uses, they will simply have to be memorized.

A useful tool I just (re)discovered for teaching ESL students about the various uses of prepositions is Longman Advanced American Dictionary. To pass the time the other day while I was waiting for a student, I started “looking up” (a phrasal verb) some prepositions. There was a ton of stuff. I focused on the preposition “on.” There was really a lot of useful information. I am continually pleased with how much information Longman provides. I highly recommended this dictionary to all my students, and I think it’s also very useful for ESL teachers and tutors preparing lesson plans.

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Simple Present or Present Continuous?

The first verb tenses to teach ESL students are the Simple Present and the Present Continuous (also called the Present Progressive). Although a thorough lesson plan teaching these two tenses will include the functions of the two tenses, ESL learners will need practice to determine when to use the Simple Present or the Present Continuous.

ESL cloze exercises can be used for student practice or for testing the student. Below is a cloze exercise using the Simple Present and Present Continuous.

You can also download this exercise as a pdf file. You will be sent to a "file hosting" site and you can download the pdf version from there. Click the "Click here to start download" button.

Simple Present or Present Continuous
Exercise #1

Instructions: Fill in the blanks with the correct verb tense.

1. Every Saturday, John (drive) ____________________ his son to soccer practice.

2. Usually, I (work) _____________________ as a professor at the National University in Tokyo, but this summer I (study) _____________________ English in the United States. That’s why I am here in the U.S.

3. Shhhh! Be quiet! The baby (sleep)______________________.

4. Don't forget to take your umbrella. It (rain) ___________ __________.

5. It (always, snow) ___________________ a lot during the winter.

6. I'm sorry, but I can't hear what you (say) _________________ . Everybody (talk) ___________________ so loudly.

7. Maria (write, currently) ___________________ a book about her experiences in the U.S.

8A: Do you want to go for a walk around the lake? I (want) _____________ some exercise.

8B: No, I can't. I (watch) _____________________ my little sister.

9. The business cards (be, normally ) _____________________ printed by a company in San Francisco. Their prices (be) _________________ inexpensive and the quality of their work is good.

10. The children (eat) ____________________ too much candy. They are going to be sick!

11. She (always, call) ____________________ her mother when she gets home.


12. Ron and Kay (look) ___________________ out the window at the beautiful bird in the tree.

13. They (feed) ___________________ the birds every day.

14. I (always, play) ___________________ on Thursdays.

15. I can’t understand what he (say) ______________. He (speak) ______________ too fast!
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ESL Cloze Exercise: Simple Present Conjugation

As discussed in Fundamentals of Teaching Verb Tenses, ESL students must know five forms of each verb in order to thoroughly conjugate a verb. Students must know the following verb usages: affirmative, negative, yes/no questions, short answers and WH- questions.

Here is a thorough verb conjugation for the Simple Present verb “to walk.” Each sentence is missing one word. Click here for a pdf version of this ESL cloze exercise. Or click here for the exercise in a table format. You'll be sent to a "file hosting" site and you can download the pdf version from there. Click the "Click here to start download" button.

Present Tense Exercise

Directions: Fill in the blank with the correct form of the verb “to walk” OR the correct “helping” verb.
A. AFFIRMATIVE

1. I ______ to school every day.
2. You ______ to school every day.
3. He/She/It ______ to school every day.
4. They ______ to school every day.
5. We ______ to school every day.

B. NEGATIVE

6. I ______ walk to school every day.
7. You don’t ______ to school every day.
8. He/She/It ______ walk to school every day.
9. They ______ walk to school every day.
10. We don’t ______ to school every day.

C. YES/NO QUESTIONS

11. Do I ______ to school every day?
12. ______ you walk to school every day?
13. Does he/she/it ______ to school every day?
14. ______ they walk to school every day?
15. Do we ______ to school every day?

D. SHORT ANSWERS
16. Yes, I ______.
17. No, I ______.

18. Yes, you ______.
19. No, you ______.

20. Yes, he/she/it ______.
21. No, he/she/it ______.

22. Yes, we ______.
23. No, we ______.

24. Yes, they ______.
25. No, they ______.

E. WH—QUESTIONS (who, what, where, when, why, how) (note: not all WH- words can be used with all verbs—sometimes they just don’t make sense)

26. When do you ______ to school every day?
27. Why do ______ walk to school every day?
28. Where ______ she go to school every day?
29. How does ______ get to school every day?
30. What ______ they do at school every day?

For more information about cloze exercises, see my ESL cloze exercises page.
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ESL Cloze Exercises

“What is a cloze exercise?” A cloze exercise is basically a fill-in-the blanks exercise. It can be used for ESL exercises or as an ESL quiz or test.

ESL cloze exercises can be used to help reinforce (and test) student’s learning of verbs, articles, prepositions, pronouns, etc. Basically, cloze exercises can be used for all grammar lessons, teaching any part of speech, or for vocabulary reinforcement.

ESL cloze exercises can be used with single sentences or with whole paragraphs or larger passages of writing. The instructions usually say something like, “Fill in the blanks with the correct words.” Or if you are specifically testing a particular part of speech, the directions might say something like, “Fill in the blanks with the correct prepositions.”

Here are a few examples of cloze sentences for the Present Perfect tense:

1. She __________ never __________ to Germany.
2. They __________ always __________ each other.
3. I __________ __________ to Mexico many times.
4. __________ you ever __________ squid?
5. __________ she __________ the movie yet?

You can see from these sample ESL cloze sentences that the student has more than one choice for the main verb. He or she just has to make sure that the correct form of the verb (the past participle) is used. The “helping” verb can only be “has” or “have.” It depends on the subject.

In short, there can be some flexibility in the answers of a cloze exercise, especially for advanced ESL students. I would limit the possible answers of ESL cloze exercises for beginning students. You can do this by providing a list of the possible answers and instruct the student that each answer can only be used once.

Future Perfect Glitch

I met with one of my advanced students today. We are reviewing the Future Perfect and Future Perfect Progressive tenses. At our last session, we finished the chapter in Azar's Understanding and Using English Grammarand I gave my student four additional exercises for homework (cloze exercises).

She came back today with the ESL worksheets incomplete. She told me that she had a hard time completing the exercises. It turns out that the exercises I gave her are from the same source I had trouble with the other day for one of my beginning students. Some of the blanks required use of the Simple Future, instead of the Perfect tenses, but the directions said only Future Perfect or Future Perfect Progressive.

I really, really must review the ESL worksheets and exercises I get from the web before I give them to my students!

We were able to use this experience as a learning tool, but she still needs help learning this tense. I'm going to use some material from Swan's Practical English Usage.

I don't think that many English as a Second Language students get much practice with the Future tenses. They are often among the last grammar points taught, and frankly, native English speakers don't use the Future tenses as much as we use other tenses, especially the past. I think this probably says more about how we live our lives than anything else.

Present Perfect Exercise Glitch

Today, I met with a beginning level ESL student. Her homework for the weekend included a cloze exercise (a "filling in the blanks" exercise) using the Present Perfect. Before we started correcting the exercise, she asked me if all the blanks were supposed to be filled in using the Present Perfect. I said, "yes." When we started going over the answers, I realized that the exercises actually required using either the Present Perfect or the the Simple Past. Oops.

I apologized profusely to the student for giving her the wrong instructions. However, we were able to make the corrections together and this turned out to be another learning opportunity. I was also able to see her thought processes in determining whether the correct verb tense was the Present Perfect or the Simple Past.

I got the ESL grammar exercise from one of the of the sites that I use regularly for exercises. (I had copied and pasted it to Microsoft Word on my laptop (giving all the appropriate credit to the website).) It said that the exercise was for the Present Perfect. Other exercises specified other tenses, so I made the assumption that the whole exercise labeled "Present Perfect" was only using the Present Perfect.

This is not the first time I discovered an error in an ESL lesson I got from the Internet. Moral of the story: review the exercise before you assign it to your student!