STEP NUMBER 19

HAVE STUDENTS COMPILE A LIST OF PREPOSITIONS!

Wait a minute . . .
I know how this works. You say compile a list of something and that means find a book and dig out the information. Well, forget it. Give me the list, or I quit.

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Ok, I get it.

YOURE LAZY

QuickTime and a TIFF (Uncompressed) decompre ssor are neede d to see this picture.

Ill make it easy. Lets define a preposition.

A preposition describes a relationship between other words in a sentence. In itself, a word like "in" or "after" is rather meaningless and hard to define in mere words. For instance, when you do try to define a preposition like "in" or "between" or "on," you invariably use your hands to show how something is situated in relationship to something else. Prepositions are nearly always combined with other words in structures called prepositional phrases. Prepositional phrases can be made up of a million different words, but they tend to be built the same: a preposition followed by a determiner and an adjective or two, followed by a pronoun or noun (called the object of the preposition). This whole phrase, in turn, takes on a modifying role, acting as an adjective or an adverb, locating something in time and space, modifying a noun, or telling when or where or under what conditions something happened.

HELPFUL HINT:
A PREPOSITION IS A WORD THAT DESCRIBES ANYTHING A MOUSE CAN DO TO A CLOCK.

WHICH LEADS US TO
STEP NUMBER 20

Consider Mr. Blairs big desk

Mr. Blair can sit before the desk (or in front of the desk). He can sit on the desk (when he's being informal) or behind the desk, and then his feet are under the desk or beneath the desk. He can stand beside the desk (meaning next to the desk), before the desk, between the desk and you, or even on the desk (if he's really strange). If he's clumsy, he can bump into the desk or try to walk through the desk (and stuff would fall off the desk). Passing his hands over the desk or resting his elbows upon the desk, he often looks across the desk and speaks of the desk or concerning the desk as if there were nothing else like the desk. Because he thinks of nothing except the desk, sometimes you wonder about the desk, what's in the desk, what he paid for the desk, and if he could live without the desk. You can walk toward the desk, to the desk, around the desk, by the desk, and even past the desk while he sits at the desk or leans against the desk.
All of this happens, of course, in time: during the class, before the class, until the class, throughout the class, after the class, etc. And Mr. Blair can sit there in a bad mood [another adverbial construction].

WHICH LEADS UP TO STEP 20

The noun or pronoun that follows a preposition in a prepositional phrase is called the object of the preposition. The prepositional phrase begins with the preposition and ends with the object of the preposition. A prepositional phrase can have words describing the object of the preposition, but can never contain a verb. If one sees a verb, he or she is not looking at a prepositional phrase. The object of the preposition can never serve as the subject of the verb.

For example:
after a frightful argument = a prepositional phrase.
after = a preposition (You know this because the word is in your list of prepositions.) It is also something a mouse can do to a clock. A mouse can go after a clock. It can also go below, during, and between a clock. This time, however, it went after.

Continued
after an argument = a prepositional phrase
so were agreedafter is a preposition. Now argument is a noun. (You know this because the word argument is preceded by an. The test for a noun is any word that can be made into more than one. EX: Argument = Arguments, or it can take the articles, a, an, or the in front of it.

Expanding our definitions . . .

STEP NUMBER 21
Expanding our definition of a subject: a subject is either a noun or a pronoun to the left of the verb that is not in a prepositional phrase.
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Just so were clear . . .

QuickTime and a TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor are neede d to see this picture.

This Is A Proposition

THESE ARE PREPOSITIONS!

aboard, about, above, according to, across, across from, after, against, along, alongside, alongside of, along with, amid, among, apart from, around, aside from, at, away from, back of, because of, before, behind, below, beneath, beside, besides, between, beyond, but, by, by means of, concerning, considering, despite, down, down from, during, except, except for, excepting for, from, from among, from between, from under, in, in addition to, in behalf of, in front of, in place of, in regard to, inside, inside of, in spite of, instead of, into, like, near, near to, of, off, on, on account of, on behalf of, onto, on top of, opposite, out, out of, outside, outside of, over, over to, owing to, past, prior to, regarding, round, round about, save, since, subsequent to, together, with, through, throughout, till, to, toward, under, underneath, until, unto, up, up to, upon, with, within, without

SEE THE DIFFERENCE!