In the last two months, I believe I’ve corrected enough essays to kill a horse. A lot of the teachers and professors send notes back with my students, listing the particular grammatical sins of the student:
I never want to see a contraction again!
Semi-colons are not commas!
If I were able to do such a thing, I would issue warnings about
PREPOSITIONS.
They’re my pet peeve.
Learn to use them properly, please.
Now, because we are discussing English prepositions, this is not a light-hearted remark. English prepositions don’t like to follow rules. The only way to learn to use prepositions properly is to practice them. Filling out page after page of cloze exercises is not going to help very much.
Read. Listen to people talk. Speak.
If you are new to the English language and are having problems with basic prepositions, do, by all means, fill out some cloze exercises. Here are some decent ones to start with:
When it comes to idioms, you’ll have serious problems making the prepositions follow the rules. Here’s a short list of examples. As you can see, it’s beyond the average ability to memorise them all. There is nothing for it but to throw yourself into the English language and learn to enjoy the quirks and eccentricities of prepositions. They are funny little things, and can be enjoyable when you learn to make them work for you.