Category Archives: Independent Practice

Here is a worksheet on differentiating the use of turn into and turn in to. Like the other 100 or so of these I will post or already have posted, the text for this document is excerpted from Paul Brians’ handy usage guide, which he has posted online in its entirety–under this link–Common Errors in English Usage.

This is an area of usage that it will serve students very well, in life and work, to know. The worksheet is scaffolded, with five modified cloze exercises, then a blank field on which students may try their hands at extemporaneously writing sentences using these two verb phrases–or phrasal verbs, really.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

Once again, from the pages of Paul Brians’ Common Errors in English Usage, here is a worksheet on toward and towards and their proper use in prose.

As Professor Brians’ passage explains, the distinction between these words is a matter of American and British English. Americans tend to use toward, whereas the British prefer towards. In any case, as you would expect, the words are interchangeable. The worksheet contains five prepositional phrases using toward, and calls upon students to build sentences around the phrases. As always, however, this is an open document that you can manipulate to your class’s needs.

Incidentally, Merriam-Webster lists toward as both an adjective and a preposition. If you look up the adjective (meaning “coming soon,” “imminent,” “happening at the moment,” and “afoot” and with an obsolete meaning of    “quick to learn”), I think you’ll agree that teaching it as a preposition (“in the direction of,” etc.) is the best course of action for helping students understand its meaning and proper use.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.