Prepositions, In, On, At; Agreeing, So do I / Neither do I and Formal Letters

Week 12^th – 14^th May

Hello!

Well, this is what we did the first weeks of May:

We started the month checking the tests we had taken in the week before. They were very good. But we went through some doubts you still had.

That’s why we revised questions with and without auxiliaries, again.

We did an exercise based on school fights! All the kids hit somebody and they were hit by somebody else.

Do you remember? (You can have a look at the blog from 7^th – 9^th April)

·         Who hit John? George hit John.

·         Who did John hit? He hit Simon and Dave.

·         Who hit Dave? Paul and John hit Dave.

·         Who did Dave hit? He hit Mark and Simon.

And so on . . .

We revised the uses of “in, on, at” for place.

Rules for the use of prepositions? Which rules do we use in Spanish? The only thing both, in English or Spanish is learning them in context. That is, if you say “in the mountain”; it’s “in”. If you say “He works on a farm”; it’s “on” and so on ( etc.)

·        Write your name at the top/at the bottom of the page.        AT

·        What have you got in your hand? What do you wear in your feet?   IN

·        I’ll wait for you at the bus stop.    AT

·        I sit in the front row of the class. IN

·        My friend also sits at the front of the class, close to me. AT

·        Can you do the exercise on page 40, please?   ON

·        I saw the news on TV.   On

·        He read the news in the yesterday’s paper.   IN

·        They live on a beautiful island. ON 

·        They live in the south of the country.  IN

·        They live on the south coast.    ON

·        I was sitting in the front /the back (of the car) when we crashed. IN

·        The house has two gardens. The big one is at the front and the small one is at the back.(the front/ the back of a building or group of people)   AT

·        Write your name on the front / on the back of the test paper. (On a piece of paper)  ON

We also learnt how to agree with affirmative and negative opinions.

AGREEING WITH AN AFFIRMATIVE OPINION		AGREEING WITH A NEGATIVE OPINION
I want to learn French	So do I / me,too	I don’t like cold countries	Neither do I / Me, neither
She can speak three languages	So can I / Me, too	They can’t speak Japanese	Neither can I / Me, neither
I’m going to buy a new car.	So am I / Me, too	I’m not going to travel by car.	Neither am I / Me neither
I went to London last year.	So did I / Me, too	I didn’t study French at school.	Neither did I / Me neither
He has arrived very early.	So have I / Me, too	They haven’t arrived yet.	Neither has Ellen.
I’d like to live in a bigger house.	So would I / Me, too	I wouldn’t like to have a lot of children.	Neither would I / Me neither.

As you can see, we use the structure “So do I” to agree with affirmative opinions. Take into account that you have to change “do” into the auxiliary used in the sentence you agree with.  And the same with the structure “neither do I”, which is used to agree in the negative.

And we finished the week by learning how to write formal e-mails and filling in forms.

Formal	Formal	Informal
Starting Dear Sir /madam	Starting: Dear Mr/Ms + surname	Starting: Dear + name
Closing: I look forward to hearing from you	Closing: I look forward to hearing from you	Closing: I hope to…
End: Yours faithfully	End: Yours sincerely	End: Regards Love / lots of love

Remember not to use contractions, abbreviations or acronyms in formal letters or emails. Be polite. Use “could”, “would like” etc.

And that was about it!

See you on Monday!