Yesterday, Jessy and I went to Borders. (For the people who do not know what Borders is. In America, it is hard to find small bookstores around a town. There are two major bookstore brands. One is Barnes & Noble and the other one is Borders. They are almost like one of the places people make an appointment to meet up and hang around. Barnes & Noble has Starbucks coffee shop in it whereas Borders has Seattle’s best coffee. Funny thing is Starbucks bought Seattle’s best a few years ago.) Well, back to the main point! So, I was reading a magazine and, in the magazine, I found the following quotes by Albert Einstein.

Common sense is a collection of prejudices acquired by the age of 18.

Interestingly, from the church bulletin I got today, there was a story about a result done by Gallup’s 2008 Values and Beliefs survey.

70 percent of Americans believe divorce is morally acceptable. That’s an 11-point increase from seven years ago. Two generations of high divorce rates have made divorce the norm in America.

So, basically, a social symptom has been happening for a while makes a big impact on a social common sense, or social norm. It was just my two cents on an issue of the social change. (Good usage of “just my two cents“! Huh!)

OK…. So… Today’s topic. It is a preposition. I am pretty sure that preposition is one of the hardest things in learning or using English. Why is it hard? I think it is because for non-native English speakers it is hard to feel them when they hear or speak. Like in, on, at, over, through, etc….. Having said that, let me take one example of prepositions with time stuff! What if I say the following to my friends.

I was thinking about going to Washington, D.C. to enjoy cherry blossom festival sometime __ April 2010 and I finally decided to go __ April 3, 2010 and will be staying there __ April 5, 2010.

What would you put in the first, second and third empty places? I am not talking about grammar. Growing up in South Korea, I was basically forced to memorize all of those grammars. It did not work out well. So, before you think about the grammar of English, you should be able to feel. I mean if you ask these kind of questions to American people, they will fill them out really easily. But then, if you ask, “Why did you choose those prepositions respectively?” Most of them would say, “I don’t know. I just feel that is correct.” Funny but it is true. If you do not feel each of them and just try to memorize the grammar, you will find yourself thinking too much to pick the correct ones from your brain every time you speak. That is what makes you really hard to speak.

A few examples I try to have some feelings whenever I happened to use them in English are;

1. on : you should feel this one like something specific or like fixed. In other words, something is stuck with something.

2. in : it feels like I am in some sort of long hallway. I can still see the starting point and the ending point of the hallway but still not that as much specific as “on”

3. through : I think something very sharp and long like an arrow. At the same time, I feel more emphasis on the finishing point with the sharp edge just like the arrow. Something starts from a specific point and ends with a sharp point.

“OK! now what would you put in the empty places in the sentence?” I know this would be easy for many of you but they are just a few out of so many. So, try to think some sort of images when you hear or use the prepositions so that it almost like stuck in you mind. And, try to pay attention what American people actually use in their sentences and mimic them. Hope this could improve your proper usage of prepositions!

I am curious how American friends think. “Do you also have those feelings when you use prepositions?”