LESSON 4: PREPOSITION

A preposition is a word which precedes a noun (or a pronoun) to show the noun's (or the pronoun's) relationship to another word in the sentence.

Most prepositions are single words, although there are some that consist of more than one word, such as out of and in between.  

(The word preposition comes from the idea of being positioned before. It is not true to say that a preposition always precedes a noun or a pronoun, but it does most of the time.)

Think of a preposition as anywhere a mouse could go:

Preposition is mostly used to indicate time and location.

For example:

Subject + Verb, Preposition, Noun (or gerund / ‘ing’ verb)

Subject	Preposition	Noun (or gerund)
The dog is	in	the kennel
The man sits	on	the chair
The tree is	behind	the house
He got dressed	after	bathing

Here is a list of  common one –word prepositions that are used to talk about place or destination. 

About	before	Down	Opposite	Toward (am)
Above	Behind	From	Outside	Towards
Across	below	In	over	under
Along	Beneath	Inside	Past	Underneath
Alongside	beside	Into	Round	Up
Among	Between	Near	Through	Within
Around	Beyond	Off	Throughout
at	by	On	to

      ·         Note that toward and towards are both used in American English, with no differences in meaning.

Here is a list of prepositions that consist of more than one word and that are used to talk about place and destination. 

Across from	Away from	In between	Next to
Ahead of	Close by	In front of	On top of
All over	Close to	Near to	Out of

·         Be careful because English has a large amount of prepositions and some of them, such as beside, by, near and next to are very close in meaning. Other prepositions, for example at and in, have several different meanings. The meaning and usage of prepositions should be checked where possible in a dictionary.