A Guide To Learn English Language

The ‘Prepo­si­tions’ are a part of the parts of speech which con­nect words, clauses and sen­tences together and show the rela­tions between them. In a sen­tence, the prepo­si­tion shows rela­tion­ships among other words in the sen­tence that include direc­tion, place, time, cause, man­ner and amount.

He went to shop-here ‘to’ is a prepo­si­tion and shows direction

She came on foot-here ‘by’ is a prepo­si­tion which shows manner

We will be there by four o’clock– here ‘by’ is a prepo­si­tion which shows time

The dog is under the bed-here ‘under’ is a prepo­si­tion which shows place.

In a sen­tence, a prepo­si­tion always goes on with a noun or pro­noun and is called the object of the prepo­si­tion. The prepo­si­tion almost always fol­lows a noun or pro­noun and that is why it is called a prepo­si­tion.  The prepo­si­tion along with object of the prepo­si­tion together is called a prepo­si­tional phrase. Here are some exam­ples for prepo­si­tional phases.

Prepo­si­tional Phrases:

on the building

Over the build­ing is the devil

Inside the room

There are over 100 prepo­si­tions in Eng­lish lan­guage. The advan­tage of prepo­si­tions over the other parts of speech is that they do not change remain unal­tered to the case, gen­der etc of the word they are refer­ring to. Prepo­si­tions are clas­si­fied into two types.

1) Sim­ple prepo­si­tions: They are sim­ply the prepo­si­tions involv­ing only one word. This is the list of sim­ple prepositions.

About,Above,Across,After,Against,Along,Amid,Around,As,At,Before,Behind,Below,Beneath,Beside,

Between,Beyond,But,By,Despite,Down,During,Except,For,From,In,Inside,Into,Like,Near,On,Onto,Of,

Off,Opposite,Out,Outside,Over,Past,Since,Through,To,Toward,Under,Underneath,Until,Upon,With etc.

2) Com­pound prepo­si­tions: These prepo­si­tions con­tain more than one word. Here is the list of most com­monly used com­pound prepositions.

In between, Because of,In front of,On behalf of,In the mid­dle of,According to,By means of,In addi­tion to,In ‚back of,In case of,In front of,In place of,In spite of,Instead of,On top of etc.

Prepo­si­tions are like idioms and are best learned through con­ver­sa­tions and read­ing as much as pos­si­ble. We rec­om­mend the fol­low­ing ways for you learn prepo­si­tions better

• Break the mate­r­ial down into bite-sized pieces. (With the list of prepo­si­tions, learn one col­umn at a time.)
• Expose your­self to the mate­r­ial in a vari­ety of ways: read it, recite it, read it aloud, and write it.
• If you are learn­ing a con­cept or a rule, make sure that you are thor­ough with it as if you are both stu­dent and teacher.