in which, on which, at which, to which, from which | Learn English Grammar

Hello, students. Welcome to Daily English Homework. 

Let's take a look at the homework. It says fix my five sentences. 

I have five sentences here. What's the problem? 

They're missing a word. What word are they missing? 

They're missing a preposition. 

All right, and you can see the preposition  will come before ‘which’ in each sentence. 

So you have to fix the prepositional  phrase using ‘which’ in each sentence. 

This sentence or these sentences are  in the description below this video. 

You copy them, you put in the prepositions,  post it in a new comment, I will check it. 

All right that's your homework and some… some  of you are thinking, Robin, how do I know  

which preposition to put before ‘which’? Well that's what this lesson is about. 

I’m going to teach you uh the basics. I’m not going to go into an advanced level. 

We're just going to keep it as basic because  it's a little new a little tricky grammar here. 

So I’m just going to go slow and  look at look at it at a basic level. 

So that's your homework and I am  going to help you out a little more. 

These are the prepositions  you need for your homework. 

at, in, from, to, of. Now, the order here, and the order here,  

it's different, so you've got to figure  out which… which one of these will have at,  

in, from, to, of all. Right, so I’m helping  

you out with the homework a lot. So it should not be too difficult  

to do this homework but you will  learn a lot by doing this homework. 

All right, let's get into the lesson. Now the prepositional phrases using ‘which’  

is… I get a lot of questions from students about  this and so that's why I’m making this video. 

Someone requests… a few  people requested this video  

so I will try to make it as clear as possible  

but again this is just a basic, basic video. We're not going to go too much into it. 

So what it says here, you need to  know prepositions and collocation. 

There are many other prepositions that can be  paired with which, under, during, about, over,  

etc., so going back here, I gave for the homework. I gave common prepositions. 

I think everyone knows these  prepositions at, in, from, to, of. 

That's why I chose kind of easier  prepositions for the homework. 

But keep in mind, that we can make ‘under which’,  ‘during which’, ‘about which’, ‘over which’. 

There's a lot of prepositions we can use before  ‘which’, so it helps to know prepositions. 

If you don't know many prepositions,  you're going to have a difficult time  

using this sentence structure. But again, I think  everyone is familiar with these prepositions. 

The other issue is collocation. Collocation - this is where we get paired. 

Collocation means we have a word  that often goes with another word. 

So they're often paired. They go together. 

So for example, in English, native  speakers will say, “I wash the dishes.” 

So ‘wash dishes’ are often  paired. That's collocation. 

Native speakers, …I I can say, “I clean the  dishes,” that makes grammatical… grammatical sense  

but native speakers usually don't  say ‘clean the dishes’, we usually  

say ‘wash the dishes’. That's collocation. 

So you want to sound like a  native speaker use collocation. 

So with the with the sentences, we're going to  talk about in a moment, I’m going to show you  

examples. Collocation is very important. You have to know, oh,  

which preposition goes with this word. And let's take a look at the first sentence. 

So I have a sentence here. Let's take a look. 

We were in a dire situation. I have ‘dire’ here. 

I’m just going to quickly explain that dire means. very very very bad situation. 

We were in a very bad situation.  = We were in a dire situation. 

And if you look at the… the purple  part now, this is the collocation. 

I know when I’m talking about a good situation  or a bad situation I know we're always going to  

use this preposition ‘in’. You're “in a situation.” 

You're not “on a situation.” You're not “at a situation.” 

I know it's always going to be in a situation. So with that knowledge, I can create this  

sentence which means the same thing but  we're using our uh prepositional phrase with  

which, so I know the situation in  which we found ourselves was dire. 

All right so I know this preposition will be  ‘in’ because… because of the word situation.

Yes, yes, that's how we make the sentence. That's you have to know this collocation to  

know that this preposition is ‘in’. Let's look at the next one. 

He spoke of politics that day. So speak, past tense, spoke. 

Spoke of a topic. This topic is politics. 

Now there are two prepositions we could use,  ‘spoke of’ and the other one is ‘spoke about’. 

You speak about a topic so there's two. I chose ‘of’. Why? Because it's my video  

and you have to follow the… the… the  prepositions I want to work with. 

He spoke of politics that day. So I know when we have a topic,  

we're going to ‘speak of’. I know the preposition is ‘of’. 

So when I’m creating the ‘which’ sentence here,  the topic of which he spoke was politics, so I  

know right away it's ‘of’. Can I say, “The topic  

about which he spoke was politics? Yes, you can. 

There's two prepositions when you have a  topic so I could say the topic of which,  

I could say the topic about which. Both are okay.

Where do you speak? Again, ‘speak’, past tense, spoke. 

I spoke at a noisy party. Okay now it's no longer a  

topic, uh, we're focusing on the location. Where did you speak at a noisy party and  

I know in English when we're talking about a  location, we always use the preposition ‘at’. 

Sometimes we use ‘in’ for inside a building but  or inside a classroom but in this case most…  

most locations are gonna be ‘in’. I’m losing my voice so I spoke at 

I spoke at a convention I spoke at a school. I spoke at um  

the conference or something like that. So I spoke at a noisy party. 

So I know that that preposition is going to go  with the location so the party at which I spoke  

was noisy. I know it's going to be ‘at’. 

We drove to a town 50 kilometers away. drove to drive, past tense, drove. 

You go to you, move to you,  travel to you, drive to. 

I know it's the preposition ‘to’. We drove to a town 50 kilometers away. 

The town to which we drove was 50 kilometers away. I know it's gonna be ‘to’ because we ‘drive to’. 

And the last example here. A little more difficult. 

We broke free from the tight chains. So you gotta imagine chains or rope  

tying you together. And you're trapped. 

And then in English, we say you break free the  tight chains, um, so I know that… that's the com  

the preposition here is going to be ‘from’. We break free from. 

Uh, you, we could break maybe I’m working  a nine to five job and I’m very sad,  

I can break free from that lifestyle, but it's  always ‘break free from’, so I know it's ‘from’. 

So the chains from which  we broke free we're tight.

All right. So  

I’m going to talk about commas now. Here, I like commas you know from other videos. 

So normally I… I… I like to put  commas here and here because ‘the  

situation was dire’ is the main sentence. And we're adding some extra information  

but with uh phrasal or prepositional  phrases using which no commas. 

That's the rule. We don't put commas if you have ‘in which’. 

No commas. I prefer commas, but the rule  

is no commas so I’m going to teach the rule. I’m going to follow the rule - no commas. 

If we have, uh, sentences using just  ‘which’, we're going to use commas,  

but this video is not talking about just  ‘which’, we're talking about preposition which  

these prepositional phrases - no commas. So each sentence here, I did not put a comma. 

And you might be thinking, well you know I  understand this sentence Robin and this sentence  

is a little bit difficult for me to make myself. I understand that as I told you earlier  

this is a basic video so the  homework is a little bit easier. 

All you have to do with this  homework is add the prepositions. 

So you got to think about what's  happening, add the prepositions here, and  

post it in the comments below, and I’ll check it. All right that's the homework. 

Good luck and I’ll see you in the next video. And until then, uh, please do your homework.