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Francora · TEF & TCF Canada · Vocabulaire
Prépositions — à, de, en, dans, par, pour
The preposition is chosen by the word in front of it, not by the meaning of the sentence. These eight units cover verb government, place, time, cause and the fixed multiword blocks.
160 questions
4 domains · 8 units
MCQ · Fill-in · Jumbled · Transform · Correct
CLB 7 → CLB 8
francora · vocabulaire
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Comment choisir la préposition
How the slot gets filled — read this before the units- A preposition is almost never chosen by meaning.
- It is chosen by the word in front of it.
- Téléphoner demands à, se souvenir demands de, and no amount of thinking about what the sentence means will produce either one.
- This is why translating the preposition from English fails: English picks by meaning, French picks by government.
The order of questions. 1. Is there a verb, noun or adjective immediately before the slot that governs a fixed preposition? Use it and stop. 2. If not, is the slot expressing place, time, cause or manner? Then meaning decides. 3. Is the whole thing a fixed multiword block (à cause de, par rapport à)? Then it is one word and has no internal logic.
The four things a preposition can be doing
| Job | Chosen by | Example | Where it is trained |
|---|---|---|---|
| Government — the word before demands it | The verb, noun or adjective. Memorised, not reasoned. | Elle tient à ce poste. / Elle se méfie de ce contrat. | P1, P2, P7 |
| Place | Meaning, plus the gender of the country | en France, au Canada, aux États-Unis, à Montréal | P3 |
| Time | Whether the stretch is still running, finished, or ahead | depuis trois ans / pendant trois ans / dans trois ans | P4 |
| Cause, means, purpose | Direction of the relation, and whether it is favourable | grâce à son aide / à cause de la grève | P5, P6, P8 |
The three that produce most of the errors
- À versus de after a verb. There is no rule, but there is a pattern worth knowing: à tends to mark a target the action reaches towards, de tends to mark a source or a thing the action is about.
- That is a memory hook, not a test — jouer à a sport and jouer de an instrument follow no logic at all and simply have to be learned.
Je pense à mon entretien.
It is on my mind. The thought points towards it.
Que penses-tu de mon entretien ?
What is your verdict? The opinion is drawn from it.
- À versus de before an infinitive. Same verb, different frame, different meaning — and sometimes a verb takes neither.
- Je commence à comprendre, j’essaie de comprendre, je veux comprendre.
- The third pattern is the one students break: they insert a preposition after vouloir, pouvoir, devoir, savoir, espérer, compter, where nothing goes.
The pair that changes the sentence. finir de = to complete the action. finir par = to end up doing it eventually. Il a fini de travailler means he stopped work; il a fini par travailler means he eventually got round to it. Same with commencer à and commencer par.
Depuis, pendant, il y a, dans. These four split the timeline and are the only place in the module where a diagram beats a list.
Je travaille ici depuis trois ans.
Started three years ago, still true now.
J’ai travaillé là pendant trois ans.
A finished stretch, over and closed.
J’ai déménagé il y a trois ans.
A single point, three years back.
Je déménage dans trois ans.
A single point, three years ahead.
J’ai rédigé le rapport en trois heures.
How long the job took from start to finish.
Why learning the verb without its preposition wastes the work
- A verb learned as se souvenir = "to remember" is half-learned.
- On the page it will appear as se souvenir de quelque chose, and the student who stored only the bare verb will write je me souviens mon enfance.
- The fix is to store the frame, never the word: not téléphoner but téléphoner à qqn; not s’attendre but s’attendre à qqch.
- Every unit below gives the frame in the explanation for exactly this reason.
The same applies to nouns and adjectives, which students rarely think of as governing anything: un droit à, un accès à, une solution à, conscient de, apte à, conforme à. Unit P7 is entirely about that half.
Contractions: du, au, aux, and when they do not happen
de + le → du, de + les → des, à + le → au, à + les → aux. These are compulsory. Je parle du dossier, never de le dossier.
- They do not happen before la or l’: à la banque, de l’entreprise.
- They also do not happen when le is a pronoun rather than an article: je viens de le faire stays as it is, because le there is the object of faire.
Fixed blocks have no internal logic — stop analysing them
- à cause de, grâce à, en raison de, par rapport à, quant à, vis-à-vis de, au lieu de, compte tenu de, à l’issue de.
- Asking why par rapport takes à is asking why however has two syllables.
- Learn the block as one word, with its final preposition attached, and learn what it means about cause direction: grâce à is for a cause you welcome, à cause de for one you do not, en raison de for a neutral, administrative one.
- Unit P8 does nothing else.
Exam mode
160 questions · 90 minutes
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- Written answers are graded on spelling; accents are tolerated.
Francora · @frenchwithguri
Prépositions — à, de, en, dans, par, pour