Friday, November 18
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Friday, November 18

Prepositions are a tricky grammar topic for both basic-level beginners and the most advanced CACD candidates. You must understand them not only to read well, but also to avoid silly errors that can hinder or even lower your grade in the Secon...

Todd Marshall
2 min
2
0

Grammar tips

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Prepositions are a tricky grammar topic for both basic-level beginners and the most advanced CACD candidates. You must understand them not only to read well, but also to avoid silly errors that can hinder or even lower your grade in the Second Phase.

Today we present some basic tips that might help you with this utterly important grammar topic.

First, do you know what are the most common preposition errors in English?

  • in x on x at
  • to x for
  • of x from
  • by x through

Let’s take a look at the first group of prepositions (in x on x at). They might be troublesome because they can be applied in numerous contexts, such as time, place/location, address, vehicle, computer/internet. Today we will focus on their uses with time and place.

For time, you should use the preposition in with any quantity of time (week, month, year, decade, century): In July”. The preposition on is used with specific days: On Christmas” or “On July 4th”. The preposition at is used with specific time/hour: At 5am”.

For places (where), you should use the preposition in with geographic spaces (In Brazil”) or when you need to indicate that the subject is inside a building (In his house”). The preposition on is used to indicate that something/someone is located on a specific surface: On the floor”. Finally, the preposition at is used with specific location: At home”.

These are just a few sets of rules and key examples. Prepositions are a huge English topic and require a lot of reading, writing, and studying. 

Next Friday we will dive deeper into more preposition rules!