Lesson Transcript

Hi, everybody. My name is Alisha. In this lesson, I'm going to talk about how to use the preposition "in" in English. Let's get started.
Okay. There are three basic groups that I want to talk about for this lesson. The first of these basic groups is locations, location. So, when I say "locations," I mean specifically before like city names and country names. Of course, you can also apply this to regions. So, maybe something that's larger than a city, but it's not the country. That could be a state, or a prefecture, or a province, depending on your country. So, we can use "in" before the name of the city, the country, the region to express being inside that place. So, let's take a look at a few examples of this.
First, "I'm in Canada," or "He's in Europe," or "We're in Egypt." So, all of these sentences express that the subject, in this case, "I am in Canada," or "He is in Europe," or "We are in Egypt," they are inside each of these places. So, that means inside the country of Canada, inside Europe, somewhere inside the country of Egypt. Another key point about these sentences is that it sounds like they're visiting the place. So, these expressions are used when we are traveling, to talk about the place we are in now, the location we're in now. So, this is a little bit different from sentence patterns like these, which express the place where we live. For example, "She lives in New York City," or "They live in London." We do not use "at" for these expressions, we use "in." So, when you want to describe when you're visiting some place, you can use "in" before the place to do that. When you want to talk about the place where you live, you should also use "in." But please make sure you use this "live" before "in." So, "lives in," in this case with he, she, or its subjects, and "live in" with I, or you, or they subjects. So, we can use it to talk about our location, the place where we are physically located. And, when we use "in," it sounds like we are inside that place.
I want to talk about a couple more specific uses, kind of more detailed uses of "in." The first one I want to talk about is the expression, "He's in the hospital." He's in the hospital. We can use "in" to refer to buildings, like community locations. Like in the supermarket, or in the bank, or something like that. It's not as common as using "at." For example, "I'm at the supermarket," or "I'm at the bank." We use "in" again when we want to emphasize for some reason that we are inside a location. We want to have that feeling of being enclosed inside a space. So, if you want to say something like, "I'm inside the supermarket," if you want to communicate that idea, you could say, "I'm in the supermarket." Like maybe you're searching for someone else in the supermarket, you might say, "I'm in the supermarket. Where are you?" You might use it in that case. But more generally, to refer to the place that we're visiting inside a community, like smaller buildings, we tend to use "at" more often.
In this specific case, however, "in" marks an important detail. This sentence means the person "in the hospital" here is sick. So, "he's in the hospital" means he is sick. When we say someone is "in the hospital," it means they have been hospitalized. That means they are staying "in" the hospital. Please note that when we use "at" in this sentence, like "He's at the hospital," it just means the person is visiting the hospital. So, if I say, "I'm at the hospital right now," it would mean I'm visiting someone in the hospital, or I have a checkup or an appointment with a doctor. It's like I'm there for a short time. If you say, "I'm in the hospital," it sounds like you are very sick or you need some extended treatment. So, please keep this difference in mind between "at" and "in" with this expression.
Another one that's very common is this expression, "I'm in a meeting." "I'm in a meeting." Here, the meeting is happening now, and the person who is speaking is participating. So, we always use the expression, "I'm in a meeting." We don't say, "I'm at a meeting." Really. We might say, "I'm at a conference." So, for a very large place or a very large kind of meeting where many people gather. Usually, like at a hotel or an event center, you could say, "I'm at a conference." We generally use, "I'm in a meeting." I'm in a meeting.
Okay. So, let's move on now. After we've talked about locations, I want to talk about time-related expressions. So, there are many different ways that we can use "in" with time. First, we use "in" before a length of time to express duration. So, that means how long something took in the past. Or, to talk about the future, after how long something is going to happen. Let's look at some examples of this. First, "Let's meet in 10 minutes," that means 10 minutes from now, I want to meet you. So, "Let's meet in 10 minutes." Or, "He finished his homework in one hour." This sentence means, in the past, it took him one hour to finish his homework. "He finished his homework in one hour," is a natural way to say that. Another one, future, "We're leaving for our vacation in three days." So, this means three days from now, we are going to leave for our vacation. Another one, "She's going to graduate from college in one year." So, again, one year from this point in time, she's going to graduate. "The test results will be ready in three months."
But this one, I want to talk about quickly. "In the next few days," you'll notice that this "in" comes at the beginning of the sentence, that's okay. So, "in the next few days," this is my time period here. "In the next few days," meaning maybe two or three or four, we may ask staff to work overtime. So, this is referring to again a future duration. "Never in my life have I seen traffic as bad as today's." So, here, "never in my life," never in my life. So, this means in the speaker's life up to now. For like, from the past up to now, in the speaker's life, this is the time duration here. So, there are many different ways we can use "in." One key point to remember is about expressions like this. When you're using, you know, 10 minutes or one hour, or something like that, please be very careful about your use of singular and plural. So, for example, "in 10 minutes," don't forget this S sound when you're speaking, and don't forget the S when you're writing. When you're using singular expressions, like "one hour" or "one year," please note you should not use an S here. Not one hours, not one years. So, please be careful of this S in your speech and in your writing.
The next point I want to talk about with time-related expressions is using "in" to express the seasons, or when you're expressing seasons, years, months, and decades. By decades, I mean 10 years at a time. A decade is a 10-year time period. So, let's look at some examples of this. "I'm going to Mexico in summer." So, "in" comes before the season here. We could use it "in autumn," or "in spring," or "in winter" as well. "I love hot soup in winter." So, again, "in" comes before the season. This example sentence uses a decade. "What was your fashion like in the 1990s?" So, please note here, "in the 1990s," we use "the" to talk about decades. So, "in the 1980s," "in that 1970s," we use this "the" before decades, before decades. "In the," decade name. Don't forget this S. This means like the group of years inside that decade. So, 1990 to 1999, so that group of years, more than one in other words. That's why we include this S.
Okay. One more. "Our company earned a lot of money in 2017." So, here "in" comes before the year I want to talk about. So, we can use "in" in these ways as well. The last point that I want to talk about with this group is time of day expression. So, there are a few times of day that we use "in" with. We use it with the expression "in the morning." So, "I wake up at 8:00 in the morning," or "in the afternoon," or "in the evening." We use "at" with night. We do not say "in night." We say "at night," at night. So, please remember these three time of day expressions use "in."
Okay. Let's go to the last group for today. The last group I want to talk about is "position," position. And then, I'll have kind of a bonus section down here, too. Position. We use "in" before an object or a place to express something is inside something else. So, at the beginning of this lesson, I talked about using "in" with locations like cities. This is the same idea or a very similar idea, but on a much smaller scale than over here.
Some examples, "My keys are in my bag." So, that means my keys are inside my bag. You can use either if you want. But "in" is shorter, so it's a little more efficient to say and to write. "We are in a cave." "We're in a cave." So, maybe you can post this as a caption to like a hiking picture or something. "We're in a cave." Again, means we are inside a cave. Or, "I found $20 in my pocket." So, the common theme with all of these sentences is that one thing can be inside of another thing. So, something "in a pocket," or "in a bag," or "in a cave." We're like communicating that feeling of being inside something, or something is inside something else. So, that is what we communicate with this position use of "in."
We can also consider position like rank. So, this is something you see a lot in competitions, tournaments, just various rankings of things. You'll see "in" before like the type of competition, or before like the category. So, let's look at some examples of this. "Our team won first place in the competition." So, here, "in" comes before like the competition or it comes before the competition name, the tournament name, the race, the marathon. Whatever like the topic is, or whatever the competition is, we place "in" before the name of that thing. Another example, "That restaurant is in the city's top 10 list." "That restaurant is in the city's top 10 list." So, here, "the city's top 10 list," is kind of like this competition, or it's this exclusive group. That's like the topic that we want to describe the restaurant belonging to. So, we use "in." "That restaurant is in the city's top 10 list." Please note in these cases, we don't use "inside." We're not communicating a feeling of like being enclosed in something here. We're rather describing rank or position, kind of conceptually. So, we cannot use "inside" in place of "in" in these examples.
Alright. The last point I want to talk about is this kind of extra point. We use "in" when we're talking about our beliefs and our opinions. Some examples, "I believe in you." So, this is a very like encouraging expression. "I believe in you," which is meant to like inspire confidence in someone. So, we use "in" before the noun phrase, in this case, "you," before the noun phrase that we have strong feelings or a strong opinion about. "I believe in" something. Another example, "We believe in a healthy work-life balance for all employees." So, that means we have strong positive opinions about this topic, "for all employees." So, you will see "believe in" noun phrase as kind of a set pattern.
So, these are all the topics I want to talk about for this lesson. As I've kind of hinted at here though, there are many uses of "in" that are idiomatic. That means they're part of like a set expression, and that's something that will come with time, and with study, and vocabulary practice. Understanding when to use "in" in those cases. However, when you're talking about locations, or time, time of day, or you're talking about position, you can follow these guidelines to help you choose between, for example, "at," or maybe "on," or "by." So, I hope that this was helpful for you. Thanks very much for watching this lesson, and I will see you again soon. Bye-bye.

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