Prepositions and Two-word Verbs

 

Welcome to today's lesson.  As with all our ESL Help! Desk units, the sentences you see below are contributed by other ESL students in college-level ESL classes.

Before you begin the activities, you may want to study the podcast and grammar lesson, He's Always Talking about Grammar, also in our Library.

To review the previous lesson, Prepositions and Transitive Verbs, Exercise 3, click here.

Transitive Verbs and Prepositions

 

Sometimes the transitive verb has both a direct and an indirect object.

There are rules for sentence structure and preposition use when the verb has both a direct and indirect object.

Notice the differences between the two sentences below:

  • We bought a refrigerator, a washing machine, and some furniture for them.

  • We bought them a refrigerator, a washing machine, and some furniture.

Exercise 3
This is most easily done if you print this exercise out. 

In each sentence below, the verb is transitive and there is a direct and an indirect object.  Underline each transitive verb once. Then determine which is the direct object and which is the indirect object.
  Direct Object: Indirect Object:
My counselor gave me advice about my major. advice about my major me
1.  They told me the truth.    
2.  Velazquez gave Juan his freedom.    
3.  We bought snacks for everybody.
4.  It was my turn to show it to them.    
5.  I'll ask her why she is crying.    
6.  The lawyer asked many questions to the client.    

Check your answers.

Based on what you've noticed above, what rules can you come up with concerning prepositions for each of the two types of sentences?

1.

2.

In our next lesson.....

 

In our next lesson, we present the rules concerning prepositions when we use a direct and an indirect object.

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