Ins and Outs of prepositions, The : A Guidebook for ESL Students : 9780764107573

Though written primarily for students of English as a Second Language, The Ins and Outs of Prepositions is also useful in remedial English courses on high school and college freshman levels. Unlike most languages - which usually have only a few prepositions to serve many different communication needs- English has dozen of them and almost none follows any clear, consistent set of rules. This book offers practical guidelines for correct usage, and provides hundreds of examples that incorporate all of the prepositions into familiar contexts. A total of 61 prepositions are examined.

Prepositions pose more problems for the non-native speaker or learner of English than any other part of speech. Why? Prepositions are just little words that never change in form; they are pronounced softly, in unstressed syllables; they aren't even given capital letters in book titles; native speakers choose the correct ones without thinking. How can they be confusing?     
       
The word "preposition" has a straightforward definition: a word placed before a noun or pronoun to define its relationship with another word in the sentence. For the learner of English, however, prepositions are anything but straightforward.    
       
    -Prepositions are difficult, if not impossible, to define without using other prepositions.