LESSON 2 - PREPOSITIONS

 A.

 Read the following situations below about experiences with neighbors. Identify if the situations talk about good or bad experiences with neighbors. Meet Suzie...

Suzie calls to check on her neighbor, whose house is in front of her apartment. She brings her newspapers and shares a cup of tea with her every day. They chat at her neighbor’s garden. Suzie’s neighbor is a 76-year-old woman, who does not have a relative living nearby.

Douglas, the dog lover...

Douglas owns four big dogs. He loves them very much. He works nightshifts in a call center and leaves his dogs inside his house. The dogs bark loudly when it gets dark at night.

Say hello to Ella...

Ella’s new neighbor is Xing from China. She is just starting to get better in speaking English. Ella helps her by showing her around. She also assists her with shopping for groceries. She intends to help her until she can manage to do these things on her own.

Mr. and Mrs. Marquez...

Mr. and Mrs. Marquez invite a lot of relatives to their house for get-togethers and reunions. They hold at least three parties in a month. Mostly, these

parties get out of control. Loud music is not turned off until dawn. Mr. and Mrs. Marquez don’t even inform or apologize to their next-door neighbors

about this.

Were you able to figure out which of the four scenarios can be considered as good or bad experiences with neighbors?

Being a good neighbor requires one to be sensitive and conscious of others’ feelings. Remember to always apply the golden rule in any situation—Don’t

do unto others what you don’t want others to do unto you!

Take another look at the situations. Look at the underlined words. What do they do? What are they for?

In speaking and writing, we want to convey clear and complete messages. We cannot do so without using words that connect and show relationships between ideas in our sentences. These words are called prepositions.

Study the following pictures below and the sentences about them. Look at the underlined words. Notice how each word changes the meaning of the sentences and the pictures.

1. The children play in the playground. 

2. The children play beside the playground. 

3. The children play across the playground.

The underlined words above are called prepositions. They show the relationship between a noun or a pronoun and another word in the sentence.

Prepositions are important in our speech. Just like the examples given, a two-letter preposition may change the meaning of an entire sentence. That is why one must be very careful in using prepositions.

Some of the relationships that prepositions express are direction, manner, time, and place or position.