Primary School English Quiz - Prepositions 2 - Pick the Prepositions (Questions)

Consider these words: AFTER, ACROSS, BEHIND, TO, THROUGH, UP, AROUND, UNDERNEATH, OPPOSITE and AGAINST. Do you know what kind of words these are? From your study of the previous quiz you might have guessed that they are prepositions.

Prepositions are an important part of speech and though they are very few in number (when compared to nouns, verbs and adjectives) they are made use of repeatedly in sentences. Their role is to describe a relationship between a noun or a pronoun and another word in a sentence.

While communicating we may talk about a place, or about time or about direction. In the previous quiz we understood how to make use of prepositions to relate to place and time. In this quiz we study the prepositions used to talk about direction.

Consider the following sentences:

“Go OUT of the building and turn right."

“Go ACROSS the bridge to cross the river.”

“You will see the supermarket IN front of you.”

These sentences contain prepositions depicted in capital letters. You notice the words in capitals are related to a noun or a pronoun. You will also notice that they give you a sense of direction. The words listed at the beginning of this introduction are all prepositions that are commonly used to denote direction.

Depending on the sentence and what we want to communicate we have to use specific prepositions. For instance, in the supermarket example it is not appropriate to say ‘You will see the supermarket ACROSS front of you.’ Using the right prepositions to show direction is vital to good communication and the quiz that follows sets you on the way to learning to use them properly.