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Writer's pictureTom Garside

What are prepositions and what do they do?


Trinity CertTESOL

One reason why English grammar is difficult for many learners is the range of small, grammatical components which are needed to complete phrases and sentences. Bigger, meaningful words like nouns, verbs and adjectives are held together with many different structural pieces such as auxiliaries, articles and prepositions. Of these, prepositions are some of the least intuitive for learners to learn. So what are prepositions, and how do they work?


Prepositions are the small grammatical words which work together with nouns. Prepositions are called prepositions because they appear in the place (position) before (pre-) nouns. Examples of prepositions are: to, for, in, at, on, by… when they come before a noun. Prepositions have two main functions: to link nouns together, and to describe where or when a verb is happening in relation to a noun, for example:


Linking nouns and nouns

I drank a bottle of water.

They are like peas in a pod.

I only eat meat from organic farms.


Linking verbs and nouns: Describing where or when

We went to the beach at 4 o’clock.

After 20 minutes, Harry looked at his watch.

They were standing on the corner for hours.


Prepositions can add meaning related to time, place and movement, as well as less directly meaningful connections. Prepositions of place and movement are often easy to remember, because they express a more direct meaning, for example:


On = on top of

Under = beneath

Behind = to the back of, etc.


However, the same prepositions are also used with specific verbs or nouns according to collocation or idiom (by convention, rather than for a specific meaningful reason), for example:


Collocations

In + the morning, afternoon, evening

At + dawn, dusk, night


Idiomatic meanings

To go on holiday (nothing is on top of anything) 

To be under the weather (nothing is underneath anything else)

To be behind in class (no-one is to the back of anyone else)


These idiomatic uses of prepositions can be difficult for learners to process, as their meanings in these specific phrases is quite different from their ‘default’ meaning, and need to be remembered together with the verb or noun examples that they connect to. A good way of working with these tricky prepositions is to take one or two examples, and organise several meanings or uses that they can have by topic, for example:


Work and holidays

To be on + holiday, leave, a break, vacation, a trip (not working)

To be on + call, duty, night shift (working)


Media and communication

To be on + the phone, the computer, TV, the radio, a podcast (the media in general)

BUT To be in a film / TV programme / a YouTube video (the specific episodes)


Transport

To be on + a bus, a train, a bicycle, a motorbike, a skateboard, a ship/ferry/sailboat

(All of which you are literally ‘on’, or you need to step onto because they are so big)

BUT to be in + a car, a taxi, a boat/canoe

(All of which you need to crouch or step down into on a lower level)


Gathering examples from the same topic to present together and contrast with similar meanings can help students to remember common examples together, rather than picking them up one by one as they come up in class.


As in the transport examples with ‘on’ and ‘in’, there is often a reason why we use specific prepositions with specific nouns. Sometimes, however, the reason is much less logical, for example think about the difference in meaning between the following:


At + the school, the hospital, the college

In + school, hospital, college


Here we use ‘at the’ to describe where we are physically, relating to the location only, whereas if we use ‘in’ without ‘the’, it means we are part of the institution of school, hospital, etc. as a student or patient.


Prepositions and adverbs


A final consideration to be careful about is the difference between verb+preposition structures, and verb+adverb structures, which are also known as phrasal verbs, for example:


He ran up the hill

He ran up a huge bill


In the first example, ‘up’ is a preposition, linking ‘ran’ with the direction where he ran. However, in the second example, nothing is moving ‘ups huge bill’, so ‘up’ relates more closely to ‘ran’ to from the phrasal verb ‘ran up’, meaning ‘accumulate’. This means that in the second example, ‘up’ must be an adverb. See my previous post about verb phrases and phrasal verbs fro more examples and analysis of these forms.


However you approach prepositions with students, be aware that they are a lot trickier than they seem, but by planning and organising lists of examples by context, and having several examples of the same prepositions for students to remember, they are more likely to associate and retain the different forms that they learn.


For another activity idea which works to bring prepositions into focus in phrases and sentences, see this article.



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