Prepositions

How long since the last time I saw you... (on the web, I mean)...

Well, as promised, here you are the file containing the exercises on prepositions we are working on at the moment and that, as has already been mentioned in the class, have been scanned from Thomson, A.J. and A.V. Martinet, A Practical English Grammar: Exercises 2 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986 [1ª ed. 1975]), pp. 22-5 and 166.

We have always thought of English prepositions as something really difficult to learn and use. Nevertheless, they are not... Of course, as almost everything dealing with English as a Second Language, it depends on the learners' attitude to/towards them. In this sense and in order to avoid mistakes when using prepositions, it is essential, as almost always, that you read and do as many exercises as possible dealing with different aspects related to the use of prepositions in English. In order to help you, here you are some Web sites on which you will find information about/(on) and exercises on prepositions of place and prepositions of time.

However, as you may imagine, not only do we have those "elementary" prepositions in English. We can also talk about "prepositional phrases" (defined in the Collins Cobuild Dictionary as "a structure consisting of a preposition and its object. Examples are `on the table' and `by the sea'" [bold type is mine]), or "collocations" ("words in habitual company" as were defined first by J. Firth ["Modes of Meaning", in Firth, J. (ed.), Papers in Linguistics (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1957, p. 183)] , on this occasion "grammatical collocations" (for those interested in the different kinds of collocations and what they consist in, read this article [although its title may seem laughable or uninteresting for us]), to say but a couple of examples (I have tried to avoid phrasal verbs and idioms). That is the reason why I have decided to add some more Web pages which prove to be really useful to improve our knowledge of such a "frightening" subject.

First, you will find here a short description of prepositional phrases and some exercises (Advanced level), and here you are a useful web page to practise (more exercises can be found on this page).

Secondly, as far as collocations are concerned, an interesting and useful dictionary can be found on the web (although no Spanish meanings have been included, but I think they are not necessary). Finally, an indispensable list of verbs followed by a preposition and some exercises, compiled by Helen Kisunko, can be found here.

I really hope all those Web sites and exercises are useful enough to stop making so many mistakes when using prepositions... Have fun!

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