Using English Prepositions - Lesson 5, Part 1 (Collocations with FOR)

My children and I like to draw,

and we also like to do arts and crafts together.

Sometimes I make things for them,

and sometimes they make things for me.

I'd like to show you a clip

where I sit down with my son

and I share some paper clips with him.

Can you guess what I made for him?

Watch and find out.

Do you know what I have?

Paper clips! - Paper clips.

Do you ever play with paper clips?

You can connect them. - Yes, you can.

Can you connect a couple? - Mm-hm.

I connected a yellow-and-red one to a white-and-red one.

Okay. So I can connect my chain to your chain.

You can make a bracelet. - Yes, you could.

Connect the final one.

It's a bracelet. - A paper clip bracelet!

You saw me make a bracelet for my son.

Do you understand the difference between doing something for someone

and doing something to someone?

Doing something for someone, like making a bracelet for my son, is a good thing.

So FOR can express "for someone's sake."

It can express a helpful purpose or good intentions.

That's why we say, "Thank you for everything."

"You've done so much for me."

Meaning, "You've done so much for my sake..."

"...so much in order to help me..."

"...so much with good intentions."

Doing something to someone is not good.

It means you hurt them.

A harmful action is directed toward them.

So I can ask, "Why are you angry? I didn't do anything to you."

To you. = I didn't want to harm you in any way.

So in general, TO can express direction or receiving of an action.

- As we saw in a previous lesson.

FOR, in general, can express intention or purpose.

- Good or bad.

A note on pronunciation.

Remember that in relaxed pronunciation, relaxed speech

TO reduces to "tuh."

The the long "u" sound reduces to a very relaxed "uh."

I didn't do anything to you.

In relaxed pronunciation, FOR also reduces.

It sounds more like "fer."

Like the end of my name, Jennifer.

I made it for him.

I made a bracelet for him.

Let's look at some collocations with the preposition FOR,

which will express purpose or intention.

Let's first look at collocations with nouns.

These nouns could be objects of verbs.

And here are some verbs that commonly combine with FOR.

If you think carefully, you'll see that all those verbs

are actions with some purpose or intention behind them.

Finally, here are some common adjectives that combine with FOR.