Prepositions

This is the first lesson in our unit on prepositions.

Welcome to today's lesson, as we begin a new chapter on prepositions.  As with all examples and exercises in all of 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!)

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The following is an excerpt from one student's essay.  The words in bold are prepositions.

Thirty years ago, people did not know much about breast cancer.  Women did not go to clinics or to their doctors for private consultations about this terrible disease.  Silently, thousands of women died from this disease each year.

The authors of the article "A Call to Action in Cancer Fight" want every woman to know that now there is hope, but only if people have health check-ups regularly and become educated about cancer.  The annual "Making Strides Against Breast Cancer" walk in cities across the United States hopes to remind people that about 175,000 women in the United States will get breast cancer each year; it also hopes to make people aware of the importance of early diagnosis in the prevention and cure of breast cancer.

What Is a Preposition?  Part 1

 

A preposition is a word that generally but not always indicates time, space, degree, direction, or some other physical or mental relationiship.

Sometimes a preposition is connected to a noun and at other times it is connected to a verb.

A preposition connected to a verb can give a specific meaning to that verb (See introduction, Part 2). Such a verb + preposition combination is called a two-word verb.

Some common prepositions are:

  • to

  • at

  • in

  • to

  • into

  • on

  • onto

  • for

  • with

  • out

  • over

  • up, and

  • down.

There are many other common prepositions. Think of a few more and mentally note them in the space below:

PRACTICE  It's not always as easy to identify a preposition as you think it might be!  There are six prepositions in the paragraph below.  Underline them.

The book The Light in the Forest, by Conrad Richter, told me a lot that I hadn't known about the life of America's indigenous people.  It also reminded me of the villagers in my native country, China.


Click here to check your answers.

Next...What Is a Preposition, Part 2

 

Our next lesson is What Is a Preposition?  Part 2.

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