Dependent Preposition Drill

Dependent prepositions (depend on, interested in, famous for) are chronically misused by learners. This drill targets them with a simple rhythm: verb or adjective → preposition → example sentence. Over weeks, dozens of pairs become automatic.

Procedure

1. Weekly set (12–20 items): choose 12–20 verb+preposition or adjective+preposition pairs. Example set:
   • depend on, insist on, concentrate on
   • listen to, belong to, refer to
   • agree with, argue with, disagree with
   • apologise for, pay for, famous for
2. Rhythm drill (5 min):
   • Teacher says a verb: depend...
   • Class responds: on!
   • Teacher: insist...
   • Class: on!
   • Mix order; speed up.
3. Sentence output (10 min): pairs produce an original sentence for each pair. Write, read aloud, swap partner, check.
4. Gap-fill test (5 min): 8 sentences with the preposition blanked. Students fill from memory.

Why It Works

• High frequency, low salience: prepositions are small; errors are persistent. Dedicated drill focuses attention.
• Chunking, not rule-learning: no cross-linguistic rule predicts dependent prepositions. The only reliable method is paired memorisation.
• Daily-ish repetition: the rhythmic drill takes 2 minutes. Include it weekly for the whole term.

Common Trouble Pairs (for speakers of article-less / preposition-different L1s)

Verb/Adj	Correct	Common error
depend	on	depend from
listen	to	listen — (dropped)
discuss	— (no prep)	discuss about
marry	— (no prep)	marry with
agree	with (person), on (thing), to (proposal)	confused
consist	of	consist from / in
suffer	from	suffer of
interested	in	interested about
good	at	good in
afraid	of	afraid from

Variations

• Preposition pelmanism: half-cards with verbs/adjectives, other half with prepositions. Memory-game matching.
• Corpus check: use Corpus Pattern Hunt to verify which prepositions go with a given verb — authentic discovery rather than rule-given.
• Write-then-check: students write a paragraph; swap with partner; partner circles any verb/adjective that should have a preposition. Target only those.
• Flashcard spaced repetition: Quizlet set of 50+ pairs; students review daily outside class.

Tips

• Chunk as "verb + preposition", not "verb; then the preposition is 'on'." One unit.
• Tolerate near-misses: a correct verb with wrong preposition is closer to correct than complete silence. Celebrate the effort.
• The list is finite and learnable. B2+ students can memorise ~80 high-frequency pairs in a term.
• Great short warmer or lesson-closer. 3 minutes a day, every day, beats 30 minutes once.

Source

Standard EAP preposition pedagogy; Collins COBUILD English Grammar on dependent prepositions; Cambridge EAP resources for advanced vocabulary. Error categories documented in Swan & Smith (2001) Learner English.