Using Grammar Girl Podcasts to Teach about Prepositions

[grammar_girl]

This blog series is written by Julia Domenicucci, an editor at Macmillan Learning, in conjunction with Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl.

Let’s ring in the new year with a blog post that focuses on prepositions in Grammar Girl podcasts.

Podcasts have been around for a while, but their popularity seems to increase every day—and for good reason! They are engaging and creative, and they cover every topic imaginable. They are also great for the classroom: you can use them to maintain student engagement, accommodate different learning styles, and introduce multimodality.

LaunchPad and Achieve products include assignable, ad-free Grammar Girl podcasts, which you can use to support your lessons. If you’re teaching a lesson about prepositions or find your class needs some more help with the topic, you can assign one (or all!) of these suggested podcasts for students to listen to before class. Each podcast also comes with a complete transcript, which is perfect for students who aren’t audio learners or otherwise prefer to read the content. To learn more about digital products and purchasing options, please visit Macmillan's English catalog or speak with your sales representative. 

If you are using LaunchPad, refer to the unit “Grammar Girl Podcasts” for instructions on assigning podcasts. You can also find the same information on the support page "Assign Grammar Girl Podcasts."

If you are using Achieve, you will find a "Quick Start Guide: Grammar Girl and Question Bank" in your Welcome Unit. You can also find information on assigning Grammar Girl in Achieve on the support page "Add Grammar Girl and shared English content to your course."

Podcasts about Prepositions

• Ending a Sentence with a Preposition [5:29]
• How to Kick Your Preposition Habit [5:45]
• Choosing the Correct Preposition [7:28]
• Don't Take Prepositions So Literally! [12:46]
• Preposition or Adverb? [16:03]

Students can do a lot more with podcasts than simply listen to them. Use one of the following assignments to encourage students to engage further with the Grammar Girl podcasts.

Assignment A: Whether or not you should end a sentence with a preposition is an ongoing debate. Ask students to write a short essay or response analyzing this debate. Have them use at least three outside sources, including the Grammar Girl podcast "Ending a Sentence with a Preposition." As they write, students might consider the following questions:

• Who feels it’s okay to end a sentence with a preposition? Who does not?
• How do they use prepositions in their own writing? In speech?
• Which side of the debate do they agree with? Do they see an argument for both positions?

Assignment B: Have students listen to a podcast on prepositions, such as “Don't Take Prepositions So Literally!”  and then have them write a short response discussing and reflecting on the experience. (All Grammar Girl podcasts come with transcripts in LaunchPad—students can also read the podcast transcript to inform their response.) Have students consider the following questions:

• How is listening to information about prepositions different from reading about them? How is it the same?
• What does the host do to connect with the listener?
• What new information did the student learn about prepositions? Can they pinpoint any element of the podcast that helped them remember this new information?

Assignment C: Ask students to listen to more than one podcast about prepositions, such as "How to Kick Your Preposition Habit" and "Preposition or Adverb?" Have them also read the transcripts. In addition to the questions above, have them write a response considering the following:

• How do the podcasts compare? Does the information about prepositions overlap, and if so, where?
• What is different about the coverage of prepositions in each podcast?
• What content or information is conveyed through audio that does not appear in the transcripts? Is any additional information found in the transcripts that is not apparent from just listening to the podcast?

Have you used any podcasts about prepositions in your class? How did you use them? Let us know in the comments!

Credit: Pixabay Image 1834859 by pexels, used under a CC0 Creative Commons License