Hello!
This video is about 'by' and 'for', two prepositions, so I'll write up first of all 'by Shakespeare'
and again 'by doing something' and then the two 'for's'; 'for you' and 'for making chocolate'.
Hope you find it useful!
We're looking at 'by' and 'for' and here's a picture to help us along, a little conversation.
She's saying 'this is for you' and he says 'oh, that's really nice! Where's it from?'
and she says 'It was made by Mexican artisans'. So we've got 'for' up there at the top, I'll
put a little circle around the 'for' and we've got a 'by' and there's a bit of a difference
between them.
My feeling is that the 'for' is somehow going forward, so I'm going to write 'for' at the
bottom here and put a little arrow underneath and that's my feeling about it and the 'by'
somehow different, the 'by' somehow seems to be going backwards; what's the origin of
something? Where does it come from?
Now, in order to practice that a bit more I've got five sentences on the right here
so I'm going to put 'by' and 'for' or rather, 'for' and 'by' up at the top here. And here's
the first sentence to think about 'there for plenty of jobs......', notice this is looking
forward; is it a 'for' or is it perhaps looking back and more of a 'by'? And the answer, to
me, is that it's looking forward and 'for'. I'll just drag 'for' over there and here's
the next sentence.
'The film was directed.....Ang Lee'. That's an example of the passive voice, so it's not
too difficult to guess which one it's going to be so I'll just grab the 'by' and pull
it down there, 'by'. And here's the next one: 'Juan is now playing........Real Madrid'.
Real Madrid is the name of a football team, as many of you will know, Juan is a footballer,
so is this a 'for' or a 'by'? Well he's in the team so I think we can say he's playing
for Real Madrid, so I'll drag the 'for' down and put it there. Now here's the next one,
well actually I think I'll put up the next two, here's the other one, because it's the
same sentence but can be interpreted in different ways depending of which of the prepositions
you choose to use. So 'the work was done.......' Jim did it, Jim was the executer so it's going
to be 'by' but in the next one Jim is the recipient so it's 'for', I'll just drag 'for'
down there. And that's the end of scene one.
And in scene two the conversation continues and he says 'what's it for?' and she says
'it's for making a chocolate drink' and he says 'how does it work?' and she says 'you
use it by spinning it, like this'. So 'what's it for', we've got the word 'for' up here,
sort of 'what is its purpose' if you like and a second 'for' here followed by a verb
with the 'i-n-g' on the end and then we've got the 'by' there, 'by spinning it', I'll
just underline that and that's, if you like, answering a 'how' question. So I can out down
at the bottom here 'for' seems to be for purpose and again it's going forwards it seems to
me and 'by' is, in this case, answering a 'how' question, sort of setting off and going
back a little bit.
Right, now I've got five sentences again, five examples - here's 'by' and 'for' and
here's the first sentence: 'People avoid taxes......taking their money abroad'. Now that seems to be
me to be a 'how' question so I'm going to take 'by' and drag it down there. People avoid
taxes by taking their money aborad. And here's the next sentence 'you can come in........the
back door', again, that seems to be the method 'how it is done', so again we'll take a 'by'
and we'll drag it down 'you can come by the back door'. And here's the next sentence 'Tea
prepares me well........my day's work' - what's the purpose of the tea? To prepare me so it'll
be 'for' so I'll just grab the 'for' and bring it down there, there we go. And the next sentence
is 'we find out.......interviewing the parents'. That's answering a 'how' question, how do
we find out? You can guess what the answer is, it's a 'by' so I'll drag the 'by' down
there and put it in place. And now for the last sentence 'thank you........supporting
our policies'. This is more about a reason than a purpose but the two ideas are similar
so again it's a 'for' so I'll grab 'for' and drag it down and put it in place.
And that's it, thanks very much for listening. I'd love to hear any ideas that you may have,
so leave me a message. Bye for now!