The ESL HELP! Desk

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. (This lesson is is open to members only
but membership is free!)

 To review the previous lesson, Prepositions: Transitive Verbs That Take a Direct and an Indirect Object, Part 1, click here.

Part 2: Transitive Verbs and Prepositions, Cont.

 

As we discussed in Parts 1 and 2, sometimes the transitive verb has both a direct and an indirect object.

• When the indirect object is first, do not use a pronoun for indirect object.
  

• When the indirect object is second, you must use the preposition before the indirect object.
  

Exercise 3
For each pod, we will give you one sentence.  Create the two other ways of saying the same thing. For this activity, we will be using two different sentence structures.  Fill in the blanks with either a pronoun (it, him, etc.) or a preposition (to, for, etc.). Print this out before you begin this activity and then you can check your answers.
They told me the story.	Velazquez gave Juan his freedom.
They told the story _____ me.	Velazguez gave his freedom _____ Juan.
They told _____   ______ me.	Velazquez gave _____ _____ Juan.
We buy everybody snacks.	It was my turn to show the agents my suitcase.
We buy snacks _____ everybody.	It was my turn to show my suitcase _____ the agents.
We buy _______  _____  them.	It was my turn to show ______ ________ them.
I asked Sue several questions.
I asked several questions ______ Sue.
ANSWERS

• When the direct object is long, it's best to maintain the word order:

Indirect Object then Direct Object.

• I asked him why nobody was wearing a coat.

• I asked my wife why she was crying.