Hello! Hello! Hello Everybody and welcome to Learn English Live 28
My name is Steve Ford and today we have a question from Rogerio from Brazil
so let's take a look at his question
prepositions in English really don't have any general rules
and when the teacher explains the rules in the basic or intermediate level
then you you find out at the advanced level that those rules can be broken
so I'm going to take some of my teaching experience
things that come up, that I talk about with the students that I teach
to help you understand prepositions better
at the bank, at the office, at the shopping mall
in the bank, in the office, in the shopping mall
what's the difference, well if you're at those locations it's more general
we don't know if you're inside the bank, outside the bank, if you're standing in front of the bank
it really is a general things, but if I say I'm in the bank, let's say I'm on my cell phone
so where are you exactly? are you at the bank?
yeah, I'm, I'm in the bank right now, yeah
so that tells the person that you are inside the bank
but if you say you're at the bank, it could inside, but it could be somewhere else
sit at your desk; I have heard some people say sit on your desk
You don't sit on your desk. If you do, thenn you're not going to get any work done because you're sitting on top of all your papers
so you want to say sit at your desk
a common mistake that I see a lot of students make is when they add a preposition
so they'll say for example: I want to ask to my brother
"ask to", it just should be "ask"
and then omitting a preposition so "explain him" should be "explain to him"
this is a very common one for upper-intermediate, intermediate even advanced students
so if you want to brush up on or review your English this one is for you
and I hear this a lot using modals
so it's very common for people to say, "I should to go", "I can to be"
and we don't do that in English we have a modal and we use what we call the simple form of the verb
so it's a little different in English, so when you see MODAL, take off that "to"
another common one that I've seen and it's not just with students from some part of the world
it's with students from all parts of the world
and that's the difference between "for" and "since"
so it's a very common mistake for people to say, "I have been studying since 14 years
you wanty to say, "I have been studying for 14 years"
why? because 14 years talks about the duration of time
if you want to talk about the specific point in time, you would say, "I have been studying English since the year 2000"
do you see the difference?
OK this last one came up with a student of mine in our class
he was asking me about prepositions, should we use them for example:
English is a very practical language. It's not incorrect to say, "the father of my friend"
but it's too long. The reason for it is that in other languages that's exactly how they would say it
so you want to be careful not to translate directly back into English
Well everybody, I hope that you enjoyed my lesson today. I will try to post a quiz to make sure you can practice more prepositions
we can never get enough of preposition practice
and I hope you enjoyed my lesson today
Bye for now!