5. How to use 'in', 'on', and 'at' when talking about time

Chapter 5. How to use ‘in’, ‘on’, and ‘at’ when talking about time

Tess Coffey

Undergraduate student at Montclair State University

Júlia Lisboa

Undergraduate student at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul

Maria Moysés

Undergraduate student at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul

Mariana Trindade

Undergraduate student at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul

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Goals: To help (Brazilian) students understand the difference between  “in”, “on”, and “at” when talking about time.

Audience: Beginner learners of English as a second language (students in elementary or high school, or students in an English language course)

Duration: 15 to 20 minutes

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INTRODUCTION

The prepositions in, on and at have somewhat similar meanings when used to talk about time. This is especially true for English learners who have romance languages, like Portuguese and Spanish, as their first language. In these languages, all three prepositions are usually translated as the same preposition. In Portuguese, for example, in, on, and at can be translated as “em” when talking about time. Consequently, learners of English often struggle with these words. This lack of understanding results in learners often using in, on and at in non-canonical constructions, such as “the meeting is in 3pm” or “Christmas is on December.”

To help these learners, we will focus on the definition of each preposition and the group of words that can be used directly after these prepositions when talking about time. Aside from helping students  differentiate between these three prepositions, the following class aims to teach students how to use corpus tools to find the answers to their language queries. We also include comprehension exercises, so that students can practice the content of the class.

STEP 1: CORPUS ANALYSIS

For phase one of our class, the Corpus of Contemporary American (COCA) English is used to conduct the searches. The word menu was  used to search for all three prepositions. The menu “word” was used as its output combines the thesaurus feature, collocates and clusters of a word in the same screen.

In addition to looking at the output of the menu word, teachers should also search for the collocates of our keywords (in, on, at). In order to do this, you can click on List and type the prepositions and add “NOUN” next to it. By doing this search, the teacher will identify the most frequent nouns that occur with each preposition. In addition, the teacher could also write “VERB”, “ADJ”, or “ADV” to search for verbs, adjectives and adverbs that might occur after these prepositions.

As an alternative, the teacher can use the menu “collocates” to find all collocates of each preposition. The results of this search will narrow down the number of concordances students need to read in order to find examples of the use of the prepositions in question. For example, in the image below, we find a number of cases where “on” is used with “Christmas”.

The concordance lines of this search (as seen in Figures 5-7) can be a great example to illustrate to students the use of “on”. While “March” appears as one of the most frequent collocations of the preposition “on”, when we examine the concordance lines, we can see that “on” only occurs with March if a specific date is given. The teacher can use examples like this to highlight the need to examine concordance lines, and not only frequency counts.

Below are a few observations regarding these prepositions that should be pointed out to students during the lesson with the help of COCA:

• These prepositions have similar clusters around them. Most of them are followed by pronouns or determiners like “this”, “his” and “my,”.  The main difference between their collocates are:

• in is used with the adverb “back”

• on with the words “based” and “down”

• at with the verb “look” and its conjugations

• Looking at the collocates of these prepositions, we can also find what phrases and words these prepositions are most commonly used with

  • • The most frequent phrases with “in” are “in time” and “in years”. These are usually used in expressions, such as “Let’s go back in time,” or “I haven’t done this in years”.

    • The most common nouns used with on are “Christmas” as in the example “We will now arrive on Christmas Day,” and “weekends” such as “We only saw him on weekends.”

    • The most common nouns using at are “night” such as the example “We went out at night,” and “noon” as in “We have a teatime at noon.”

STEP 2: PRACTICE ACTIVITIES

In class, the teacher could demonstrate the steps presented in the previous section, or print the output of the “word” menu for each of the three prepositions investigated. Next, we propose two hands-on activities for the students. The last activity is a board game that is to be played by three or more students per game, while the first two activities are more traditional, fill in the gaps and correct the mistakes exercises.

Task #1: Fill in the gaps

Complete the sentences with in, on and at.

1. What time did you arrive yesterday? ___ 6 o’clock.

2. ___ December 31, the night of new year, we see fireworks  ___ midnight.

3. ___ July, I read 5 books.

4. This happened last year. It has to stay  ___ the past.

5.  ___ Monday, I went to my cousin’s house.

6. The meeting today is  ___ night.

7.  ___ the summer, I love eating ice cream.

8. Me and the girls play volleyball  ___ Wednesdays and Fridays.

9. I was so young  ___ 2004.

10. When is your birthday? It’s  ___ July 1st.

11. I study just ___ the morning.

Task 2 # Correct the mistake

Directions- State if each of the following sentences use “in”, “on”, or “at” correctly. If not, replace “in” , “on”, or “at” with the correct preposition when talking about time.

1. This entry was posted in Friday, November 16th, 2012.

2. Sears also plans to open up the doors at 8 p.m. and will be open through black Friday.

3. The Third International Mathematics and Science Study published in 1996 showed that America’s 12th – grade students ranked among the lowest in the world in mathematical proficiency .

4. Trick-or-treating is a customary celebration for children in Halloween .

5. The observatory is closed at the summer except through special arrangements.

6. On the 1980s a series of scandals received widespread publicity.

7. A corrected statement was released at 9:09 pm.

8. Independence Day parades one of many Americans’ favorite festivities on the 4th of July .

9. During winter temperatures frequently drop below freezing on night.

10. The textile industry became prominent on the 19th century .

Task #3: Board Game

The board game is only accessible on this site. Each group of students must have access to a computer or a tablet. Please refer to the following game rules:

How to Play

• Setup: Choose 1-4 players, enter names, and start the game. All players begin at space 1.

• Turn: Click "🎲 Roll Dice" (shows 1-4), then click "Move" to advance that many spaces.

• Questions: After moving, answer a random grammar question about prepositions (in, on, at).

• Correct Answer: Stay in your new position. Next player's turn.

• Wrong Answer: Go back to your previous position. Next player's turn.

• Question Types: Fill-in-the-blank ("___ 6 o'clock") or Correct/Incorrect grammar sentences. (Questions are randomized, so some questions may repeat. 

• Reaching Space 11: When you reach the flag space (11), you must answer a FINAL QUESTION.

• Winning: Answer the final question correctly to win! Wrong answer sends you back.

• Game Board: 10 regular spaces plus 1 winning flag space. Multiple players can share spaces.

• Dice Rules: Only moves 1-4 spaces maximum. No moving backward voluntarily.

• Strategy Tip: Focus on preposition rules - IN (months/years), ON (days/dates), AT (times/night).

• Goal: Be the first to reach space 11 AND answer the final question correctly! 🏆

The teacher can give each winner a prize to encourage students to play.

Coffey, T., Lisboa, J., Moysés, M., & Trindade, M. (2023). How to use ‘in’, ‘on’, and ‘at’ when talking about time. In L. Goulart & I. Veloso (Eds). Corpora in English Language Teaching: Classroom Activities for Teachers New to Corpus Linguistics. Open Educational Resource. Montclair State University.