Prepositions By For and To English Grammar for Beginners
uh we’re going to begin today with
bi by talking about buy the preposition
bye so i have a few different ways i’m
going to speak a little more
slowly now too so uh
this uh i have a few different
groups so a few different uses of the
word
buy first let’s look at how we use
buy to mean near so buy
[Music]
so this is how we use buy with a
location all right i think youtube has
joined us fantastic
sorry for the technical issues youtube
hi everybody
okay your perfect time and perfect time
in youtube so we’re going to talk about
buy we’re just beginning okay so when we
use
buy it looks like this buy the desk
or buy my house or buy
your drink or buy a park so you’ll
notice
in each of these we use by
followed by a location so this can mean
like a city yes or a place
in your community it can also mean
something that moves
so for example here buy your drink or
buy a park uh well parks don’t move but
like
something that’s not like this is the
this is a good example buy your drink
something that moves so we use by
plus location to mean near so lots of
people ask me so what’s the difference
between
by the desk and near the desk really
nothing
in terms of meaning but to me near just
sounds a little bit
more formal okay we tend to use bi
a little bit more in everyday speech so
this is
a one use of buy for today’s lesson i
want to focus
a lot on these two uses
of the preposition by so
why why because many learners
uh make mistakes with these two points
right here
with these two uses of five the first
use of buy
is to uh is sorry this one is with
buy plus a point in time
to express a deadline so a deadline
means the point in time
by which you have to finish something
or something is going to complete
so for example by tomorrow
or by november or
by 3 p.m or
by spring by this time next year
so these all express deadlines
at some point in the future
something is going to happen or
something is going to finish
the problem with this preposition for
many learners
is that many people like to use until
we cannot use until in this way
to create a deadline it’s incorrect like
until tomorrow
we use until to talk about continuing
actions that will
stop at a certain point in time
here we have we’re marking a deadline
we’re not talking about a continuing
action here so please keep this point
in mind if you have questions or example
sentences please send them
in the chat and i will try to check in
real time everyone saying hi
great oh also if you have not already
please make sure to like and share the
video so others can find it we have all
the technical issues
fixed okay so this is uh the first use
of buy i taught a lesson uh on you
there’s a youtube lesson
available about by and until that i
taught
i’ll put a link to that in the
description the youtube description so
you can check the differences
after this lesson okay let’s go to this
next one this is the other point i
really want to focus on uh for this
week’s lesson
uh by plus some like
data point for example number a number
or a time period or percentage
this is a percent mark we use by
plus data point to express
the amount of change so how much
something changed this is really
important
uh we’re going to see kind of the
opposite sort sort of uh
version later with a different
preposition
in today’s lesson so let’s look at these
let’s look at these three example
sentences
the price increased by 100
so the price increase by 100 means
there was a base price for example
the regular price was 10
then the price increased by 100
means the new price is 110
so this is showing how much
something changed and
this verb right here tells us
what kind of change so the price
increased by 100 let’s compare this to
this one the second one here support
dropped by 30
support dropped by 30 percent
this so dropped this dropped this is the
past tense
of the verb drop to drop to go down very
suddenly yeah
so support dropped by 30
so this buy tells us how much
change there was so not 10 percent or 20
but 30 this tells us
the degree the amount of the change
okay uh finally
life expectancy improved
by five years life expectancy improved
by five years so life expectancy
means how long we expect
to live so 80 years or 60 years or 70
years
life expectancy improved so that means
it went up
it got better by five years so that
means if life expectancy was
70 years it sorry the light life
expectancy was 70 years
it went up by five years
so we use by to talk about the amount of
change of something this is different
from two which i’m going to talk about
later okay some questions are coming uh
zergio on youtube says dropped is
similar to
fallen uh yes just be careful of the
grammar
so support fell by 30 yes you can say
fell or decreased like i said drop
sounds like very suddenly like when you
drop
an object it’s very sudden right so
drop communicates that sudden uh
feeling okay uh
all right nadeur on facebook says the
raw activity concentrate
increased by two percent so you’ll
notice
these are all past tense yeah
so we tend to use this kind of
change thing with future tense
or past tense like to report
something in the past or to predict
something in the future
so please keep your verbs in mind your
verb tense
okay i don’t see other questions so i’ll
go to the last part for this
uh common expressions with bi common
expressions with five
so uh these are not like uh rules
necessarily like these
but they are important uh things to know
important phrases by the way
by the way i think a lot of you know by
the way
it’s just when something when a new idea
that’s
related to that similar to your topic of
conversation
comes to your mind you can say by the
way to introduce that
like it’s not the main topic but
you want to bring it up you want to talk
about something in your conversation
or in an email by the way you can use
that to introduce
to change between your topics so if
you’re writing an email for example
and your email is about a meeting you’re
like okay so the meeting is at 3 p.m
today right
by the way do you want to get lunch
today so it’s like
it’s something that’s sort of not the
main topic
but you want to ask anyway you want to
introduce it anyway
all right cool uh so the next two
uh are actually kind of a pair a set
this is a pattern you can follow
it is day by day i chose here sorry i
erased the y
day by day or hour by hour
or minute by minute or month by month
whatever
you can choose what period or
uh yeah to put in this pattern
this expresses a gradual change
like day by day his english improved
or hour by hour she got more and more
nervous
so it’s saying something is gradually
changing
in this like time period
so with each day or with each hour
something gradually
changes we can use day by day hour by
hour this
time by time pattern to do that
finally stop by i have only stopped by
here but we have lots and lots and lots
and lots of phrasal verbs
that use by someone on youtube just
wrote can i say i saw someone passed by
my house yes
someone passed by my house so to stop
by or to pass by or to drop by and so on
these are phrasal verbs relating to
movement
so stop by means to quickly
stop at a location just for a few
minutes like stop by
the store stop by your house and so on
pass by means to pass something near it
so in the facebook example to drop by
again with drop sounds like you quickly
go someplace and leave so buy
is often used in these kinds of movement
related phrasal verbs with these stop
and drop
go as well okay so this is our first
preposition for today the preposition
bye
bye uh someone says what about by
the time we use it in past perfect i
think yeah yeah yeah so that’s
similar to this one right here by point
in time
like by the time i graduated i had
something something something
yes we can use uh buy and that way too
so we use by to refer to points in time
in these examples i talked about future
examples when we express
deadlines but yes we can use it
to talk about uh past past points too
all right so that’s our first
preposition for today how exciting
all right uh i’m looking for your
examples
uh many of you are writing uh day by day
blah blah blah blah yes that’s correct
that’s correct janalis
on youtube um i only stopped by to say
hi to alicia
that’s funny okay how about standby yes
standby means wait
to wait or in the expression stand
by someone like stand by me or stand by
her
it means support someone to show support
for someone
all right let’s finish up by
if you’re just joining uh thanks very
much for joining us today’s
topic is prepositions we’re talking
about prepositions by
four and two in today’s lesson uh
i just talked about the preposition by
now we’re going to go to four also
uh we had some technical difficulties
earlier so i couldn’t talk about it
as much as i wanted to but there is free
stuff as always for you from the links
below the video if you’re watching on
youtube or above the video
if you’re watching on facebook so all of
these
uh yes i know i show them to you a lot
but
each of these vocabulary and expression
pdfs to download they’re about specific
topics yes but inside
each of these you’ll find these
prepositions used
everywhere so here’s an example uh this
one’s the around town conversation one
for example here’s one we’re going to
talk about later today how do i get
to the and so on so
there are if you download like i don’t
know several of these a group of these
and look for today’s prepositions i
think that’s a good way to practice
studying how to use them naturally
because it’s kind of difficult to just
try to keep the like a set you know two
or
by pattern in your head it’s good to
practice these
naturally all right uh
let’s continue on i will show you
today’s lesson boards again
now that we’re all here uh today’s
lesson boards look like this we
just talked about the preposition by
now we’re going to talk about the
preposition four
lastly today we will talk about two so
we have lots to do
let’s continue to four part two today
all right also if you have not please
make sure to like and share the video
so that other people can find today’s
lesson
okay uh where is four there it is let’s
talk about
the preposition four now when do we use
the preposition
four there are a few situations
so four let’s shift our brains
to four uh four
so we can use for to express
a purpose to express a purpose so what
does this mean
we can use it in two really two
main patterns first is
4 plus a verb in the ing
form or this is hard to see isn’t it
4 plus a noun
phrase 4 plus a noun phrase so choose 1.
you can’t use both you cannot use both
uh well in a couple specific cases
i’ll share with you so for
in this way expresses a purpose like a
reason
for something so let’s look at some
examples what am i talking about
what do i mean so for cooking
so this is a verb in the ing form like
for example
i need this ingredient for cooking or i
need
this thing for cooking so we are
expressing
some like need or some purpose for an
object or so on
for lunch maybe you’ve heard this we can
use this for meals and so on
so i ate something for lunch so we can
imagine that is meaning
for the purpose of lunch yeah or for
my homework i need to study this for
my homework so expressing purpose
again or for reference i included this
because this is a really really good one
uh that you will probably see
i use this in my lessons a lot something
for
reference means something for you
like extra for you to know for you to
check later for reference for reference
so
for reference and then we give some
extra information
this is a very common pattern so keep an
eye out for it i use this a lot actually
for reference
other examples for cleaning so this is
that verb in the ing
form another really common one is for
fun
for fun like uh i’m going to
go to the beach for fun meaning for the
purpose
of fun so all of these
express some kind of purpose
we can use either pattern we cannot say
for funing
so please remember these two we cannot
use them together we cannot mix them
verb in the ing form cooking cleaning
or a noun phrase a noun phrase so this
expresses
a purpose okay onward
i don’t see other questions
sorry i said your name wrong on facebook
says i need oil for
cooking perfect nadoor says i will have
a break for
lunch perfect kuna says we do it
we just do it for fun perfect perfect
okay everybody is crushing it very nice
ooh guillermo has a great question on
youtube guillermo says
what’s the difference between i bought
this pan for cooking
and i bought this pan to cook there’s no
difference they’re both fine
uh i bought i would say though like and
when i say there’s no difference i mean
they communicate the same idea
uh i think i bought this pan for cooking
sounds like generally more natural your
second pattern i bought this pan
to cook is it sounds like uh we’re going
to hear the
end of that i bought this pan to cook
fish
or i bought this pan to cook rice
something like that i feel
like that’s maybe a situation we would
use
the second pattern but they communicate
the same idea
all right let’s go to the second part of
four here this one is 4
plus a length of time a length
of time not a point in time a length of
time
this expresses the duration
of an action or condition the duration
of an action or condition
that means how long did something happen
or
how long did a condition happen or
continue for example for two hours
for three months for a week
for 10 years for a second
for 30 minutes all of these
are lengths of time please note
these hours months years
and minutes these are plural yeah
for a week yes this is
one week but it’s still a length of time
right
seven days same thing here for a
second it’s still a length of time
so please remember uh please keep in
mind
your countable and your uncountable
nouns
here so uh this expression for
a second you might hear this when
someone wants your attention
very very briefly like hey can i talk to
you for a second
it doesn’t mean literally one second it
means very quickly can i talk to you for
a second
you might also hear can i talk to you
for a sec
can i talk to you for a sec which means
for a very
short period of time okay
uh so some questions are coming in
evelyn says my class is for two hours is
it correct
that is not correct unfortunately no so
when we talk about the duration of an
action or condition
we often use this to like to like i said
before to make a report
so we’re talking about uh something that
has finished
or something uh that come that’s coming
up for example
so i studied for two hours
is correct uh in your example sentence
my class is two hours long
so in that case we’re talking about like
a statement
of fact yeah so this is a pattern
we often see with a present perfect
and past perfect tense
also with a future tense as well too
okay um some other examples are coming
in
uh ditros i hope i said your name right
on facebook says i learned english for
two years very nice very nice
um okay i don’t see others yet
many of you are talking about your
english study experience
then let’s finish four wow time went
quick
let’s finish this with a few common
expressions about
four so the first one here is for a
while
you might have seen this i’ve had some
seen some questions about this
actually so for a while what does for a
while mean
like it follows this pattern but what’s
a while
for a while means an unspecified
duration
that means we don’t know how long so
like let’s go shopping
for a while or let’s uh let’s relax
for a while it means we don’t have a
plan
for how long just let’s do it
and then we’ll decide when to change
or when to stop okay
another one that’s very common for now
for now so what does that mean for now
that’s not a
duration now is not a duration right for
now
is what you use when you don’t want to
make
like a final decision about something
so for example you go to a cafe
and you want to eat but
you haven’t decided yet so you say for
now a coffee
for now just a coffee which means at
this time
just at this time a coffee so for now
sounds like in the future you want to do
something else or something else is
going to happen
but at this point just this
so for now just a coffee for now
just the preposition four we’re not
going to talk about the others now
okay uh quickly then these last ones i
included a few phrasal verbs uh that i
talk about
a lot actually on this channel so to go
for
a meal like to go for lunch to go for
dinner to go for a drink
as well is okay means to go
out in order to have that to go
out to eat breakfast to go out to eat
lunch to go out to eat dinner
so that means not eating at your home so
to go
for a meal to look
for to look for we use this to mean uh
to search like to look for a new
apartment
or to look for a new job so
to search is what look for means what’s
the difference between look for in
search look for is more commonly used in
everyday conversation finally
to work for to work for
so this means to be employed to be
employed at a company so to work for
apple to work for google means to be
employed at apple to be employed at
google it’s just
another way to say that we use work for
in everyday conversation employed you
might see on like contracts and official
documents and so on
all right time has gone quick so i’m
gonna finish
four with that point okay
uh raquel says i work for my husband’s
company perfect perfect
uh alexander has a question on facebook
look for
can be used for something and someone
yes
look for so i’m looking for my friend
or i’m looking for my mom or i’m looking
for my coffee
you can use it for people and for
objects yes thanks for that question
uh okay i’m looking for your questions
but i don’t see any i see lots of great
example sentences though
someone says i’m looking for a second
chance good or i’m looking for
a lesson very nice okay we need to
continue to the last preposition
today because uh time’s going quick i’ll
show you again
uh some free stuff real quick you can
get i’ll show you another preposition
example
uh we were talking about food weren’t we
we’re talking about cooking and food
so uh let’s see where’s a good one
there are lots of them oh my gosh it’s
noisy
so i’ll show you a couple more of these
and you can choose
whichever topic you like here’s a nice
one there’s a lot
uh about hobbies i feel like i haven’t
shown you this one in a while this one’s
about music you can check this out
some phrases on the back uh here’s one
we’re about to talk about this
preposition
right here do you want to go to karaoke
so nice little segue nice little
transition
so pick up these uh all these are for
free from the link below the video if
you’re watching on youtube or above the
video
if you are watching on facebook so i’ll
show you
again our boards for today very quickly
this is what we are talking about in
today’s lesson
i just talked about by we just finished
four now lastly we are going to talk
about
two hooray very exciting so let’s get to
it
let’s get to it oh my gosh okay uh
if you have not as well please do make
sure to like and share the video so
other people can find today’s lesson
that would be awesome all right onward
two the preposition two many uses oh my
gosh look at them all
so let’s talk about them let’s talk
about two
two plus a destination
a destination marks movement
movement so i just said let’s go to the
last part
so the last part is my destination
so destination means your final goal
like the
final place you want to move yeah for
example
go to bed so your bed is the destination
or drive to the store that’s your
destination
mail to him so you’ll notice destination
a destination
can be a person this is when we are like
sending something or mailing something
yeah
so the verb is important to use right
we can also use it with go like go to
him or go to her
which means to move to that person
past tense example went to canada went
to canada send to me
or wave to her i included this example
sentence
because i want to talk about a very
interesting
preposition choice that you can use and
the native speakers use
all the time to communicate an
interesting little nuance
wave to her wave to her so that means
you see your friend on the street
and you wave to your friend so it’s like
you send her
a wave kind of that’s sort of the
feeling yeah you go like this
your friend also waves they see you and
they wave
but sometimes you’ll see
someone use at instead of
two why is that so like this wave at her
you might also hear different verbs like
talk at
someone instead of talk to someone it’s
like what does that mean
the difference here between at and two
is when we use at in a case like this
like wave at her
it’s like we don’t expect the other
person
to respond or maybe the other person
doesn’t
realize we’re waving or talking or it’s
just
it’s just a one-way situation to
communicate that
we change the preposition here to at so
wave at
her or like to talk at someone it just
sounds like
the other person isn’t listening really
so
you might hear this preposition changing
to
that okay so an interesting little point
uh okay onward walk to school is another
one
the final point i want to talk about is
this i have it marked with an x
so that means please don’t do this two
there
two there for example uh i went to there
or i go to there every day we do not
use to with there because
there is not a destination it’s not a
specific location
all of these bed canada school
the store it’s a specific place
there is not so we do not use
to there with these patterns okay
on to the next part because time is
going quickly
two plus limit
expresses a maximum or a minimum
oh my gosh time’s going quick but this
is important if you watch the beginning
of this lesson i talked about
by this is used in the same position
as buy but it communicates a different
idea
two plus limit the price increased to
100 that means the price
increased the new price is 100
that’s the new top price the new like
maximum
another example efficiency dropped to
20 so this is not the amount of change
it’s talking about the new level the new
final position of something
efficiency dropped to 20
efficiency the books
were stacked to the roof that means
until
the roof the books were stacked so we’re
expressing
some kind of limit a maximum or like a
new minimum
we use 2 plus our limit
in this case data points or a physical
limit
like the roof is the frame of the video
so we use
two to express these ideas in this way
okay real quick because oh my gosh
i have no time the last two points for
two
to show a relationship as in this is
important
to me or please respond
to her message please respond to her
message
so this use of two shows a relationship
between uh things
the final point for today hopefully an
easy one
is to show time and time periods like
i work 9 2 five from nine
two five or the movie is eight
to nine thirty or it’s ten to three
it’s a quarter to one so
these express times are time and time
period related
expression that we use to with
wow that was a lot uh
and i hope that it was all okay i have
to finish
uh or else the team the remote team will
get very upset with me
so uh we’ll finish there for today’s
lesson
as i said uh i have taught about many of
these topics before
on the channel so i will share some
links in the youtube description i can’t
change the facebook one so if you’re
watching on facebook please visit
youtube.com englishclass101
i will put some links in the description
so you can check and review
after this live stream uh
and next week’s lesson i’ll be back next
week of course too
uh if you’re new yeah i broadcast we
broadcast
once every week uh you can set a
notification to make sure you always
watch next week i’m going to talk about
basic and reduced adverb clauses
september is going to be a month
of writing practice lessons i’ve decided
so
basic and reduced adverb clauses for
example
while i was teaching this lesson versus
while teaching this lesson
so what is that like how do we do that
how do we make them smaller we’re going
to talk about this
next week so please join me alright i
have to finish there i am very late so
thank you very much for liking and
sharing the video check out your free
stuff
from the link below or above the video
yeah thanks for your cool example
sentences for sharing
all that good stuff enjoy the rest of
your week and i will see you again
next time bye