Are you home or at home, in the office or at the office.
Are you listening to this podcast at your house or in your house? Those
tricky English prepositions always cause trouble until today, let's discuss. Welcome to another
Happy English podcast, coming to you from New York City, and here's your
English teacher, Michael. All righty, thank you John, and thanks everyone.
It's Michael here from Happy English and I help people speak English better.
And this is Happy English Podcast Episode seven twenty one, on versus AT.
Among the various aspects of learning English, prepositions seem to cause more problem than
anything else. In particular, a lot of listeners to the podcast have told
me that understanding when to use in and when to use AT to talk about
location tends to be confusing. Well, today I'm going to help you out
with exactly that. Let's dive in. Here are two sentences. Kate is
in her office, Kate is at her office. What's the difference. Well,
the fact is that in everyday English conversation, these two sentences Kate is
in her office and Kate is at her office have little difference in meaning and
can be generally used interchangeably. That's because when we speak in a general way.
We can use either at or in to describe a location. However,
AT and in have some specific uses and meanings when you need to be less
general and more specific. What I'm going to talk about next is what we
tend to do and tend to do is the key concept here. It's what
we tend to do. When we use the be verb to talk about location.
We tend to use in. When we talk about the location, in
simply goes with the be verb to tell us the location. Here are some
examples of this. I was in the lounge for an hour waiting for my
flight. Noriko is in a cafe on Madison Avenue. Tammy was in the
library all afternoon. She sure likes to study. I was in the lounge,
Norico is in a cafe. Tammy was in the library. In goes
with the b verb. On the other hand, when we talk about an
action using an action verb, we tend to use at to talk about the
location. At gives us the nuance about something that happens at a location.
At goes with an action verb. Here are some examples of that. I
had lunch at the lounge while I was waiting for my flight. Remy had
a cappuccino at a cafe on Madison Avenue. Elena likes to study at the
library because it's nice and quiet there. Again, this is what we tend
to do. Can I say I had lunch in the lounge? Sure I
can, just like I can say I was at the lounge. But the
key idea here is that we tend to use in with the b verb and
at with an action verb. That said, we also have some set phrases
within and at which have particular meanings. Let's look at those next. The
first set is in the hospital and at the hospital. If I say Jack
is in the hospital, it means he's a patient there. But if I
say Jack is at the hospital, it means that he's visiting someone, or
he works there, or maybe he went there to pick up some medicine.
By the way, for all of you British English fans, when they talk
about a patient, they usually say that Jack is in hospital without the That's
one of those differences between American and British English. In a similar way,
we have in jail and at the jail. If I say the bank robber
is in jail, it means he's incarcerated. In other words, when the
bank robber is in jail, it means he is a prisoner. The police
officer is at the jail, this means that he is working there or doing
some official business there. The third set is in college and at college.
Jenny's daughter is in college now. In college means she is a college student
now. But if I say that Jenny's daughter is at college, this has
a nuance that Jenny's daughter is away from home, living on a college campus
and probably in a dormitory. Keep in mind, the best way to remember
this and any other word or phrase in English is to take that word or
phrase, write it in a sentence that's true for you or true in your
world, and then memorize your sentences. By the way, can you imagine
getting a chance to practice this kind of English with me directly? You can
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practice this English point with speaking and writing checked by me. To learn more
or to see some of the example sentences from this lesson, just visit Myhappy
English dot com and choose podcast lesson seven twenty one. Remember, learning another
language is not easy, but it's not impossible, and I'm here to help
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