Glossary: preposition phrase

A preposition phrase has a preposition as its Head followed by a noun, pronoun or noun phrase.

He was in bed.
I met them after the party.

On the Englicious site we generally use the term prepositional phrase, by which we mean the same as preposition phrase.

Orientating a scene: prepositions in travel guides

Goals

To understand how prepositions construct meaning in a non-fiction text.
For students to apply this to their own writing.

What and how do prepositions mean?

Begin by showing your class a list of prepositions (or - even better - ask them to generate the list themselves). Display the list on the board, and ask: what do prepositions do and how do they do it? The discussion should arrive at the following conclusions:

Writing a story with prepositions: Activity

Prepositions

Y6 GPaS Test: Identify the preposition phrase

Find the preposition phrase in a range of examples

Identify the preposition phrase in each of the following examples. Click on the words that comprise the phrase to select or deselect them.

Y6 GPaS Test: Preposition phrases, adverb phrases, and time

In each of the following examples, indicate whether time is expressed using a preposition phrase or an adverb phrase:

Identify the type of phrase

Identify the type of phrase (noun phrase, preposition phrase, etc.) in each of the examples. Although we have included verb phrases as an option, remember that the National Curriculum calls these clauses.

Writing a story with prepositions

Applying knowledge of prepositions to a short story

This lesson looks at how you might use your knowledge of prepositions and preposition phrases to write a short story aimed at children.

Preposition phrases

A preposition phrase has a preposition as its Head word, usually followed by a noun phrase. Here are some examples of preposition phrases, showing a preposition + noun phrase sequence:

in + boxes
in + the boxes
in + the big boxes under the table

The noun phrase can be a single word or a string of words, as the examples show.

Here are some examples of prepositional phrases in sentences:

Phrases

A phrase consists of one or more words that belong together. It takes one of the major word class elements (noun, adjective, etc.) as its Head.

Prepositions in instructional writing

Prepositions are particularly important when trying to communicate instructions about time and place.

The Activity page appears in the menu entitled 'This Unit' in the upper right corner of this page. The Activity page contains one slide: an example of instructional writing from our corpus. You can see that quite precise instructions are given as part of a recipe. It is reprinted below with the prepositions highlighted.

Method

Englicious (C) Survey of English Usage, UCL, 2012-21 | Supported by the AHRC and EPSRC. | Privacy | Cookies