B2 prepositions

Recap

Do you remember the missing prepositions?

01: You have a strange look on your face. What are you thinking ____?

02: They never invite us ____ their parties!

03: I'm not very good ____ expressing myself.

04: Eating too much processed food is bad ____ you.

05: I don't spend much money ____ food.

06: I paid ____ dinner and she paid ____ the tickets. I paid ____ cash and she paid ____ card.

07: Amsterdam is famous ____ its canals and tulips.

08: He's very proud ____ his daughter.

09: I fell ____ love ____ football at the age of four.

10: How much progress you make with prepositions depends ____ you!

More!

more adj + prepositons

more verb + prepositions

01: be aware ____ smth

02: be capable ____ smth

03: be committed ____ smth

04: be concerned ____ smth

05: be fed up ____ smth

06: be grateful ____ smth

07: be jealous ____ smth

08: be ready ____ smth

09: be satisfied ____ smth

10: be tired ____ smth

01: apologise ____ smth ( ____ smb)

02: apply ____ smth

03: accuse smb ____ smth

04: insist ____ (doing) smth

05: consist ____ smth

06: shout ____ smb

07: suffer ____ smth

08: respond ____ smth

09: participate ____ smth

10: succeed ____ (doing) smth

Parts of speech

As you might remember, proud is an adjective that collocates with of.

I am proud of myself.

He is proud of his daughter.

We can express the same idea by changing the part of speech. When we do this, the preposition changes:

proud (adj); be proud of smth; I'm proud of you.

pride (n): take pride in smth; I take pride in my work.

pride (v): pride oneself on smth; I pride myself on my work ethic.

More examples:

be sympathetic ____ smb

sympathise ____ smb

have sympathy ____ smb

be angry ____ / ____ smb

take one's anger out ____ smb

express anger _____ smth

Note 1: changing the part of speech doesn't always result in a change of prepostion:

to worry about smth

to be worried about smth

to be responsible for smth

to take responsibility for smth

Note 2: some verbs take a direct object (no preposition), but a preposition appears when we change the part of speech

to influence smb / to have an influence on smb

to affect smth / to have an effect on smth

to impact smth / to have an impact on smth

Nouns

So far, we've mostly focussed on adj + prepositions and verb + prepositions. Now, take a look at some noun + prepositions. What's your instinct here?

I don't have an answer ____ your question

One advantage ____ living here is...

There is a great demand ____ skilled workers

They had a huge influence ____ me

I can't find a solution ____ this problem

There was absolutely no reason ____ that kind of behaviour!

2025 saw an increase ____ inflation

There is no chance ____ us remembering all of these constructions

I have no access ____ my email account right now

There is no basis ____ such a belief

Chicory is an alternative ____ coffee

I do not want to have a discussion ____ this issue

Active independent learning

As we already know, English relies heavily on preposition to hold its grammar together. Very often, there's no clear and obvious reason for why a particular preposition is used, which can be enormously frustrating for learners.

A good thing to remember is that choosing the wrong dependent preposition is incredibly unlikely to cause confusion (I'm good in singing is perfectly understandable.)

For some, though, accuracy is incredibly important. While testing yourself endlessly might lead to fatigue and disappointment, it is something you can do as much as you want with prepositions.

Try the following task:

- find a news story / magazine article / blog post online

- copy the text and paste it into your preferred LLm

- use the prompt (replace all the prepositions in this text with ____

Let's put this to the test - I'm going to take part of a blog post on travelling and remove the prepositions.

Best Things To Do In Japan

https://theworldtravelguy.com/best-things-to-do-in-japan-what-to-do-for-fun/

It’s hard to make a list of the best things to do in Japan, because there are just so many cool and fun activities ____ this country. Every island ____ Japan is interesting, but ____ a first timer, many ____ the best sights and activities ____ tourists are ____ the cities ____ Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo.

There’s a huge variety ____ cultural attractions here, both old and new. You can ride a futuristic bullet train ____ the city and then explore an ancient temple or Samurai castle ____ the same day.

We’ve visited Japan a bunch ____ times over the years, but it never gets old. It’s one ____ our favorite countries ____ the world to travel.

Read ____ for some ____ our top ideas ____ what to do ____ Japan!

1: Visit The Samurai Castles

Japan has lots ____ castles left ____ from its medieval period, when Samurai warriors ruled the land. These fortresses are impressive works ____ art and they can be fascinating to explore.

There are a bunch ____ these Samurai castles scattered ____ the country, but two ____ the top ones to see are Himeji Castle (near Osaka and Kyoto) and Matsumoto Castle (near Tokyo).

This is hands ____ one ____ the best things to do ____ Japan, and it’s pretty budget friendly!

Reaction and notes

The first noticeable thing is the prevalence of basic prepositions like OF and IN. That can make the task feel quite imbalanced - so many easy answers and then a couple of tricky ones.

But, as a good student, I might take the following notes:

be scattered across a place (found in many different places, perhaps not close together)

There are some castles scattered across the country.

hands down - without doubt

It is hands down the best restaurant in the city

left over - something that remains unused / not destroyed

We have some food left over from last night's dinner

Note: only scattered across looks like something that fits into what we've been studying, but perhaps this is a sign that tricky dependent prepositions don't appear quite as much as we think they do. The more of this kind of work you do independently, the better your conclusions will be.

Now try it yourself with a partner.

Find a text and ask your favourite LLM to remove the prepositions.

Note: some LLMs are better than others. Many cheaper models might also replace articles.

Work through the text with a partner, adding in the missing prepositions and then check your answers at the end.

Finally, work back through the text and pick out any language that's new for you.

If you're unsure, ask the LLM to explain / translate this language and give some extra examples with it.

Reflection

Is it unrealistic to expect students to be such active learners and mine texts for prepositional constructions?

Can you think of any other ways to test yourself with prepositions?

English teachers often struggle to find meaningful ways of teaching prepositions. If you were a teacher, how would you do it?

This module is going to jump from collocating prepositions to collocating verbs next. What do you think that means?