What is a preposition? Prepositions with Georgie

Prepositions. People hate them.

But what are they?

And why are they so difficult?

This is Georgie from BBC Learning English.

Let's get into it.

I live in England. Right now,

I'm walking through the streets of London.

I can see cars on the road because people are travelling

from their homes to work. Prepositions are words like these.

They go before nouns to show things like time:

I'll see you at 7 o'clock.

  Place: Where? At the restaurant.

And direction: OK,  

I think I'll walk from my house to the restaurant

and then I'll get some fresh air.

Some propositions are one word.

Some are more than one word.

But why are they so difficult?

Well, often there isn't a direct translation in a person's first language.

Or, if there is, it doesn't always apply, because prepositions

in English have lots of different meanings and uses. Just have a look

at all of these uses of the word 'over':

The plane flew over the mountains.

I slept a lot over the weekend.

The athlete is over two metres tall.

OK, so we know they're difficult.

But, how can we learn them more easily?

I've got two tips. One:

It helps to learn them with words they are likely to go with.

So don't learn 'depend' on its own: learn 'depend on',

don't learn 'consist' on its own: learn 'consist of'.

Two: It also helps to learn them in categories, like 'time', for example.

So, now you know a little bit more about prepositions

and why they are so confusing, in the next videos,

I'm going to show you some tricks for how to remember

the prepositions. And in the meantime,

practise using the worksheet on the website. See you next time.