Prepositions of Movement
Prepositions of movement tell us the direction or path of an action — where something is going, entering, crossing, or climbing. By the end of this page you will know exactly which preposition to use in every situation.
Prepositions of Place
Master in, on, at, and the full set of English positional prepositions — so you always know exactly where something is or where an action happens.
Prepositions in Prepositional Phrases
Prepositional phrases are one of the most versatile tools in English. By the end of this page, you'll know exactly how they're built, what roles they play in a sentence, and which prepositions to choose for place, time, manner, reason, and more.
Prepositions of Time
Master at, in, on, and the full set of English time prepositions — so you always know which word goes before a date, a day, or a time of year.
Why prepositions are challenging — and how to learn them
English prepositions are challenging precisely because they are semi-idiomatic: the same spatial concept can be expressed differently in different languages, and English collocations often defy direct translation. The three core prepositions of place (in, on, at) follow a scale from general to specific, but the rules have dozens of exceptions.
Beyond place, English prepositions cover time (in the morning, on Tuesday, at noon), manner (by hand, on foot, with care), and agent/instrument (written by, made of, cut with). Prepositional collocations — where a specific preposition follows a particular adjective, noun, or verb — must largely be learned as vocabulary items: interested in, responsible for, depend on, keen on, result in.
At A2–B1, learners focus on core time and place prepositions. At B2–C1, the emphasis shifts to collocational patterns, prepositional phrases in formal writing, and the cases where British and American English use different prepositions.