Mastering prepositions like "in," "on," and "at" can be tricky, but with proper guidance from the College of English Language in Los Angeles, you'll breeze through these challenges and gain confidence in using them effectively.
What to do with the ins, the ats, and the ons, indeed! These ones are tricky, we can agree on that. Trickier than learning to form questions, more treacherous than knowing how to ask questions properly, and even slyer than other prepositions of time.
They have their weaknesses, mind you, and we, the self-appointed language superheros are here to rescue you from the lifetime of preposition-induced headaches! We will help you get started, but, for the rest, best to try and enroll in an English language course in Los Angeles, California.
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“At” and “on” can get really difficult to distinguish between really quickly, and it’s understandably so. They can be used both as prepositions of time and prepositions of place, but they have other uses as well, making them a rather demanding duo to learn.
However, there are some common uses of these two thorny prepositions, and we’re going to give it our best effort to explain the differences as clearly and briefly as possible. We don’t want to make your difficult learning efforts even more confusing.
“At” has many potential uses, but we’re going to only focus on the ones that appear most frequently, so as not to overstress you.
Now, let’s see what’s happening with “on”. Who says you have to go to the University of California Department of Linguistics to learn about prepositions.
Confusion usually arises when you’re trying to describe a location, but you’re unsure whether you should use “in” on “on”. As for other uses, they’re not that similar, and you should have little trouble distinguishing between the two.
So, seeing as indicating locations seems to be the problem, let’s take a closer look at when you should use “in” for a location, and when you should use “on”.
If you want to specify a location using “in”, all you need to do is follow this simple rule of thumb - You use “in” for an action happening inside of a clearly defined space. That space can be a room, a house, a yard, or a box.
So, you’ll say “I’m playing football in the backyard.” and not “I’m playing football on the backyard.” Sounds simple enough, sure, but it still takes a while to perfect.
“On” is mainly used to specify that an item is at the surface of something. So, whereas “in” indicates that something is happening inside of a location, “on” indicates that an activity is taking place on a surface. We hope it makes sense. Oh, and the surface does not have to be horizontal.
So, you can say “The picture is on the wall.” as well as “There is some milk on the table.”. If this is not clear enough, take a look at the following two sentences:
If this doesn’t clearly point out the differences, nothing else will. It’s not as easy as it sounds anymore, is it?
Yes, someone can help, at that someone is the teaching staff of the finest language school in Los Angeles - College of English Language. Our school provides the best language course in California, and we can guarantee that once you attend, prepositions will become a breeze. No more struggling to read at the Huntington Library with our help. If this all sounds good to you, drop by and see about signing up.
