AT, ON, or IN? The Triangle Method for Prepositions of Place

No more mistakes! Learn this simple trick to use “at”, “on”, and “in” correctly in English. Master common prepositions of place with the Triangle Method, to speak and write more fluently at work, in school, on exams, or in daily life. Then, move on to master prepositions of time with my other video: Take the quiz here: TRANSCRIPT Hi. I’m Rebecca from . In this important lesson I’m going to show you how to use three very common prepositions correctly in English, and they are: “at“, “on“, and “in“. Now, you might have seen an earlier lesson of mine where I talked about “at“, “on“, and “in“ when it had to do with time, and we used something called “the triangle method“. But here, also, we’re going to use this triangle method to learn “at“, “on“, and “in“, but we’re going to refer to places. Okay? To place; not time, but place. So, let’s see how it works. So, here we have the triangle, and you can see “at“ at the top, “on“ in the middle, and “in“ at the bottom. Okay? So what does that mean? So, here we want to show that “at“ is used when we’re talking about very specific places. Okay? For example, when we’re talking about the name of a restaurant: “at Starbucks“, “at McDonald’s“, and so on. Or when we’re giving a specific address: “at 25 Main Street“. Okay? So, you have the number; not only the street, not only the city, but the specific number of the building and the street - “at 25 Main Street“. Or we say a specific place, like: “at JFK Airport“. And even if it’s not with a name, it could just say: “at the airport“, “at the office“. Right? “At the library“, “at the supermarket“. You see that it’s very specific, and that’s why we use “at“; in those very specific situations. All right? Got that? Now let’s look at the second one. So, the second one is “on“. “on“ we use for a little bit more than a very specific place; it’s a little bit wider. For example, we see here on a street, or a highway, or a floor. Okay? So, we see: “on Main Street“, “on Route 66“, “on the 6th floor“. Okay? So: “Somebody lives on Main Street.“, “I drive to work on Route 66.“, “I work on the 6th floor.“ Okay? So we see that it’s a little bit wider than that specific place. Little bit wider tends to often be horizontal kind of places. Okay? Next we come to “in“. So, this is for everything more. Okay? So, “in“ is used for large areas. For example, we say: “in Los Angeles“. Well, let’s look first at what the categories are. So, large areas, such as a city, a state, a country, a continent, or just a large area. For example, we could say: “He lives in Los Angeles.“, “She lives in California.“, “They live in the US.“, “in North America“, “in the world“. Okay? So, what do we see here? That “in“ is the broadest; it’s the widest. Okay? And then “on“ is a little bit less, and “at“ is very specific. Okay? So, have you got that? Let’s find out when we do a little quiz where we’re going to practice using these very common prepositions: “at“, “on“, and “in“. Okay? Because we use these all the time; we use them in writing, we use them in speaking - and if you have a mistake in this then you’re going to have lots of mistakes. So, let’s get it right and let’s practice with a little quiz. Okay, so before we get started, let me just tell you that there are two ways that you could do this with me. One is if you’d like a little more time to think about the answer, then just pause the video, and you can see all of the exercises. So, stop it, write down the answers, think about it, and then you can follow me as I go through it. Or if you feel you can do it right away, then join me right now. Okay? Let’s get started. So, again, your options are what? “at“ for something very specific, “on“ for something a little bit wider, and “in“ for the largest areas of all. Okay? All right. So, let’s begin. Number one: “_____ Tokyo“. What do we say there? Okay? Yes. It should be “in Tokyo“. Okay? Why? Because Tokyo is a city, and it’s a large place, so we said that for large places we use “in“. All right? Next: “_____ Hill Road. _____ Hill Road. I live _____ Hill Road.“ What would you say, there? Which of these? Okay, good: “I live on Hill Road.“ Okay? So, we said “at“ is the specific one; “on“ is for things like also the horizontal kind of places like roads, and streets, and rivers. Okay? The places like that; the floor that you live on. Okay? We say “on“, “on Hill Road“. Number three: “_____ Brazil. She lives _____ Brazil.“ What would you choose for that one? “She lives“-yes-“in Brazil“. Okay? Again, Brazil is very wide. Right? It’s a big place, so we want the widest option, which is “in“. All right? “in Brazil“. “in“ for cities, countries-remember?-continents, large areas of land, or also in the world. All right? […]