These 24 prepositions of location task cards give adult ESL grammar students focused, varied practice with spatial relationships. This kind of practice builds real accuracy the way simple memorization can't. Designed for beginner adult ESL students, the cards cycle through four distinct task types so that students are thinking about meaning each time.

Prepositions of place are small words with a big job. Your students hear them, say them, read them, and write them every day, but without enough varied, contextualized practice, the distinctions between above and over, or next to and in front of, stay fuzzy. These task cards fix that by asking students to engage with the same concepts in four different ways across 24 cards.

WHAT'S INSIDE this 18-page PDF:



✅ 24 task cards covering in, on, above, below, under, between, next to/by, and in front of (with 37 blanks total across all four task types); color and black-and-white versions included

✅ Student answer sheet + full answer key

✅ teacher page

FOUR TASK TYPES

• fill-in-the-blank with images: Students use a picture and sentence context together to choose the correct preposition, so they're reading and interpreting visuals, not just filling in blanks.
• definition match: Students read a definition and identify which preposition it describes, building conceptual understanding rather than surface recall.
• context clues: Students choose the correct preposition from a provided list based on sentence context alone with no image to lean on.
• open write: Students read a sentence and fill in the gap with a correct preposition themselves. More than one answer may be possible, which opens up good discussion.

HOW TO USE THESE TASK CARDS

Print, cut, done. Add them to your task card library and use however suits your class. Students can work through them independently, in pairs, or in small groups. My blog gives lots of ideas for how to utilize task cards. The answer sheet keeps everything organized, and the answer key makes checking quick.

The progression across the four task types gives you built-in scaffolding. If you want to ease students in, start with the image-supported cards before moving to context-only and open-write tasks. Or mix the types together and let students work through them in any order. 

THIS WAS CREATED FOR ADULT ESL STUDENTS

The language on these cards is clear, age-appropriate, and grounded in the kind of everyday situations your adult ESL grammar students need to use these prepositions in, like describing where things are, following directions, and understanding spatial relationships in conversation and text. 

This also works well for secondary ESL students or native English speakers who need targeted review of spatial prepositions.