In/ at/ on/ no preposition SNAP

In, at, on or no preposition matching card game

Instructions for teachers

Cut up one pack of cards per group of two or three students. You can add more words which take the same preposition to the blank cards, or leave them out. Students deal out the cards but don’t look at the cards in their hand. They take turns turning over their top card, and race to shout “Snap!” when the last two cards take the same preposition.

Before or after the card game, get them to put all of the cards into four columns by preposition.

Cards to cut up/ Suggested answers

on	no preposition	at	in
He’s ____ another line	______ yesterday	______ midday	It is ____ the meeting room
Rely ____	_______ today	____ exactly 4 o’clock	See you ______ a few minutes!
______ the 16th	_______ last week	____ about 3:30	I will retire ______ 2 years
Insist _______	______ this week	Arrive ______ the station	______ advance
___ Easter Sunday	____ next year	Leave a message ______ reception	______ the 80’s
______ my birthday	_______ the day after tomorrow	Work _______ head office	___ the 21st century
______ 17 January	_____ the day before yesterday	___ the end of the year	______ January
______ New Year’s Day	______ the week before last	___ the beginning	___ the second half of the year
______ the 2nd  Saturday of  April	________ the week after next	______ the start	_______ the summer

______ my own	______ next month	______ the top	___ the rainy season
________ my desk	________ this month	_____ the bottom	I live _______ London
_______ the roof	______ last month	_______ exactly this point	_______ the filing cabinet
______ average	______ tomorrow	_______ 1 pm	________ front of the main gate
______ this date	_____ next week	________ noon	______ the middle
_______ this day	_______ this year	________ midnight	___ the Southwest
Arrive _______ time	________ last year	______ two in the morning	______ that general area
Work ____ a project	______ next ….	_____ midnight	______ the morning
___ the ground floor		_____ the moment	_____ the early evening
Get _____ the bus			_____ addition to
_____ the internet
Insist ______			Things ____ common
_____ top of

Accompanying article

Do your students complain that learning what preposition goes with which word is boring and/ or difficult? I’d be willing to put money on it. Did you telling them they just need to use them and practice them over and over again not fill them with enthusiasm, Well, ‘Prepositions SNAP’ may well be the answer.

The game SNAP is a simple children’s game that can be played with a normal pack of cards. The pack is divided equally between the two players and then they take turns placing their cards face up on the table in two piles (one for each player). If the cards shown are at any time the same, the people playing must shout ‘SNAP!’ as fast as they can. The first person to shout SNAP can take all the cards that are down on the table. The aim of the game is to get the whole pack of cards.

Most people seem to be familiar with the game in its original form. Obviously, taking in a pack of real playing cards to demonstrate will help them get the idea. I then tend to introduce just a couple more rules. Students should take turns turning their cards over, not at the same time, and if anyone shouts SNAP and they are not the same they must give 3 cards to their partner as a penalty.

Now to introduce ‘Prepositions SNAP’. It’s basically the game described above, but SNAP is when the prepositions that fill the gaps on the cards are the same. For example, ‘An interview _____ a job’ and ‘Have lamb _____ dinner’ are both SNAP because they both take ‘for’. If you expect your students to know most of the phrases already, give one pack of ‘Prepositions SNAP’ cards out to each pair and off they go (with you as the judge).

If your students need a bit of preparation first, write the prepositions (,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,) up on the board and elicit a word that goes with each one. Then give out the packs of SNAP cards and get the students to put them in columns by preposition. When they finished, you’ve checked their answers and they’ve written the difficult ones down they simply shuffle, deal and play. I also like to give my students the language they need to talk about the game itself: ‘It’s your turn’, ‘to deal’, ‘to shuffle’, ‘to turn over a card’ ‘to cheat’ etc, as well as the literal meaning of the word ‘snap’.

Whenever anyone in the class wins, you can stop the whole class. In the groups that haven’t finished, the person with the most cards in their hand wins.

The same game can be adapted for a whole bunch of language points that usually make the students groan, e.g. phrases with make and do, verb + infinitive/ -ing form. In fact, there are so many uses that you’ll probably be looking for a variation or two. Well, the same pack of cards can easily be used for a pellmanism (the memory game where you spread the cards across the table face down and have to ‘pick a pair’) or a simple race to put them (correctly in columns). Alternatively, you could try my variation on SNAP, which I call MATCH SNAP. Again, the students have half the cards each. This time both students chose one card from their hand and they then slap their cards down on the table face up at the same time. They must then find a card in their hand with the same preposition as the one their partner put down, and slap this one on top, saying ‘SNAP!’ The first person to do so correctly takes all four cards and puts them on his/ her side of the table. When both students have got through their hands they count how many cards they have won to see who is the winner. If anything, this is even more competitive and frenetic than the original SNAP game.

Originally published in English Teaching Professional magazine.

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Related pages

Prepositions page

Snap and pelmanism in EFL classes (TEFLtastic classics Part Seven)