Once again, my students have helped me learn my subject matter better. One private student is working on GRE vocabulary, and we recently practiced the verb “gloat.” With some browsing, we confirmed two collocations. Both The Britannica Dictionary and the Cambridge Dictionary list examples using “gloat over” and “gloat about.” (In fact, the latter also includes “gloat at,” which seems to be less common according to Google Ngram Viewer.)Then another student asked me which prepositions follow “start.” There are several possibilities, especially if you consider collocations such as “in the middle” and “from the top.” My student was particularly confused by “start from the beginning” and “start at the beginning,” which I generally consider the same, but for me, “from the beginning” implies from the beginning to the end — and I’m prepared to hear a complete story or account. In a previous post, I shared a handout offering practice with prepositions following adjectives. (See links to related posts below.) I’d like to follow up with a new PDF that presents different collocations, namely with different, struggle, frustrated, gloat, and start. (See full handout below.)Also, in addition to the online resources I named in my 2023 post, I’d like to add one more, which I recently came across: Lingo Help. I haven’t been able to verify where the examples are taken from, but I’ve found the search results helpful for identifying common collocations with prepositions. The results can be confirmed with learner dictionaries. The new handout presents each collocation and prompts use through discussion. I may take production one step further in a live lesson by working with students to compose a short text integrating several of the collocations. Featured image by Rama Krishna Karumanchi from PixabayRelated posts: Learning Flexibility with Prepositions (2023)Flexibility with Prepositions – PDF handout
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