Adverbs of Place ESL Worksheets & Games
Dominoes of Place
ESL Adverbs of Place Game - Vocabulary: Matching - Group Work
In this enjoyable adverbs of place game, students match dominoes together to reinforce the meaning and use of adverbs of place. In groups, the first player puts a domino down either before or after the domino on the table, making sure that...
Sentence Solvers
ESL Adverbs of Place Game - Grammar and Vocabulary: Matching, Gap-fill - Group Work
In this entertaining adverbs of place game, students race to complete sentences with the correct adverb of place. In groups, students take turns being the reader. The reader picks up a sentence card and reads it aloud, using the word 'blank' for the...
Where Are They?
ESL Adverbs of Place Game - Grammar and Vocabulary: Drawing, Guessing, Forming Sentences - Group Work
In this free adverbs of place game, students race to guess present continuous sentences containing adverbs of place from drawings. One student from Team A comes to the board. Give the student a card...
Draw and Write
ESL Adverbs of Place Worksheet - Vocabulary Exercises: Unscrambling, Drawing, Error Correction, Identifying
In this useful adverbs of place worksheet, students learn and practice place adverbs through drawing and writing exercises. First, students unscramble letters to make 12 adverbs of place and...
What can you see?
ESL Adverbs of Place Game - Vocabulary and Speaking: Drawing, Identifying, Forming Sentences, Freer Practice - Group Work
In this fun adverbs of place game, students look at drawings and guess sentences that describe movement using place adverbs. A student from Team A comes to the front of the class and picks up a card...
Exercises Everywhere
ESL Adverbs of Place Worksheet - Grammar and Vocabulary Exercises: Table Completion, Binary Choice, Gap-fill, Rewriting Sentences
In this productive adverbs of place worksheet, students learn and practice a variety of place adverbs. Students begin by completing a table with the adverbs of place...
You Practice Here
ESL Adverbs of Place Worksheet - Grammar and Vocabulary Exercises: Matching, Gap-fill, Changing Word Forms, Writing Sentences - Speaking Activity - Pair Work
This free adverbs of place worksheet helps students learn and practice adverbs of place, in contrast with related prepositions. To start, students match situations...
Understanding Adverbs of Place
Adverbs of place tell us where an action happens or where something is, using words like here, there, outside, nearby, and everywhere. Students who confuse adverbs of place with prepositions often write structurally broken sentences, adding objects after place adverbs that do not take them or omitting objects that prepositions require.
This page covers adverbs of place across Elementary (A1-A2), Pre-intermediate (A2), and Intermediate (B1) levels, with seven activities including a charades game, a dominoes game, board games, and writing worksheets, with two available as free downloads.
The table below groups common adverbs of place by category and shows where each type typically sits in a sentence.
| Category | Common Adverbs | Example Sentence | Position in Sentence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Position (static location) | here, there, inside, outside, upstairs, downstairs, nearby, abroad | 'She stayed inside.' / 'He works abroad.' | Usually end of sentence |
| Direction (movement toward or away) | here, there, away, back, forward, up, down, out, in | 'Come here.' / 'He ran away.' | End of sentence or directly after the verb |
| Distance | nearby, far, away | 'They live nearby.' / 'She moved far away.' | Usually end of sentence |
| Indefinite place | somewhere, anywhere, nowhere, everywhere, elsewhere | 'I looked everywhere.' / 'She went nowhere.' | End of sentence; use 'anywhere' after negatives and in questions |
When to Use Adverbs of Place
Giving Directions and Commands: Speakers use directional adverbs of place when they need to guide someone's movement in real time, making instructions short and immediately clear, as in 'Come in,' 'Sit down,' or 'Wait outside.'
Setting a Scene in Writing: Writers use adverbs of place to anchor a reader in a physical space without writing a full prepositional phrase each time, keeping narrative description lean and readable, as in 'The keys were upstairs, and she could hear footsteps coming from nearby.'
Referring to Unknown or Indefinite Locations: In everyday speech, people use indefinite place adverbs to talk about locations they cannot or do not want to specify precisely, which is natural and common in spoken English, as in 'I need to go somewhere quiet' or 'I looked everywhere but I cannot find it.'
3-Step Framework for Teaching Adverbs of Place
1. Ground the Vocabulary Visually: Before students can use adverbs of place in speech or writing, they need to see what the words actually mean. A worksheet that asks students to draw lines to match each adverb with its opposite anchors meaning through visual contrast, and the payoff comes at the end when students draw a picture from a description that uses place adverbs, proving they have understood the words well enough to turn language into an image.
2. Consolidate with a Competitive Board Game: Once students know the words, a board game that makes gap-filling fast and competitive helps lock them in. Students race to choose an adverb of place from the game board and say it aloud to complete the sentence, for example choosing 'down' to finish 'I am very tired. I need to sit blank.' The 'Name two...' squares add a vocabulary stretch: students must name two things that match the description to stay on the square, or they move back one space.
3. Tackle the Adverb versus Preposition Problem: The trickiest point at intermediate level is understanding when a word like 'outside' or 'inside' works as an adverb and when it needs an object to become a preposition. A worksheet that makes this contrast visible and physical works well here: students read sentences and cross out the object of one preposition in each sentence to change it into an adverb, so the grammatical shift becomes something they can see and feel rather than just read about.
Common Mistakes with Adverbs of Place
Adding a Preposition Before 'Here' or 'There': Students often write 'to here' or 'to there' by treating these adverbs like nouns that need a preposition, when they already carry directional meaning on their own. Wrong: 'Come to here and sit down.' Correct: 'Come here and sit down.'
Using 'Somewhere' in Negative Sentences: Students often use 'somewhere' in negative sentences because it is the default place word they reach for, not realizing that 'anywhere' is required after negatives and in questions. Wrong: 'I didn't go somewhere yesterday.' Correct: 'I didn't go anywhere yesterday.'
Common Questions About Teaching Adverbs of Place
What is a fun game for practicing adverbs of place?
The game Adverbs of Place Charades is a free miming game where students read a sentence using the word 'blank' for the adverb of place and mime it for their group. The first student to guess the correct adverb and say the complete sentence wins and keeps the card. It runs for 20 minutes and suits any size class.
What is a useful worksheet for adverbs of place?
The worksheet Exercises Everywhere focuses on the adverbs elsewhere, anywhere, nowhere, and everywhere. Students complete a meaning table that maps each word, then work through gap-fill and sentence-rewriting tasks before completing a dialogue with adverbs of place from a box.
What is an engaging activity for practicing adverbs of place?
In the game What can you see?, each student picks a character card, a movement card, and an adverb card, forms a sentence, then draws it on the board. The first student to identify the character, movement, and adverb of place and say the correct sentence scores a point for their team.
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