Lesson Transcript

Hi, everybody. My name is Alisha. In this lesson, I'm going to talk about how to use the English preposition "at." Let's get started.
Okay. The first use of "at" I want to talk about in this lesson is using "at" with places and buildings. So, we use "at" with places and buildings to express a place where something happens. Let's take a look at some examples of this. First, "at the bank" or "at the supermarket." We can use "at" before typical places in our community. So, you can use this with places that you go every week, every day, whatever. We use this to talk about our errands. Like, "I'm at the bank right now," or "I'm at the supermarket right now. Do you need anything?" We use it in this way to talk about places in our community. You'll also commonly hear it used with "at work" to talk about being at your job. "I'm at work right now," or "I'm at work until," this time.
Another one you might hear is used in cases like this. Like, "at the mountain," or maybe "at the river." So, even though this is not like a building in the community, if it's a place that's known in your community, like I said a mountain or maybe a river, or some other natural feature that's near your town that everybody understands when you mention it, it's common to use this "the" before that place when you talk about being there. So, for example, "I'm snowboarding at the mountain today," or "We're swimming at the river today." So, you may hear this used for recreational activities, leisure activities. You might also hear it used in cases like these, "at a party," or "at a concert." So, in these cases, party and concert are not like physical places. They're not buildings and they're not like a place in the community, but they're events. So, they're kind of like short-term gatherings, yeah. So, we use "at" to talk about those. "I'm at a party," or "I'm at a concert." The last one here is "at home." Another very, very common one. Please keep in mind, we use "at home" to talk about something that is already at your home. So, we don't use the expression "at home" when we're talking about going to or coming from our home. We could say, "I'm at home right now," or "I was at home last night when the storm began." So, we use "at home" for things that are already in our home.
Another couple of points I want to make here. Maybe you've noticed I've used like "the," "the," "a" in these cases. So, when you use "the," like "at the bank" or "at the supermarket," it's for something in the conversation that is known. Same thing with like "at the mountain" or "at the river." If there's a place that your family or your friends, whatever -- in your like group of people that you regularly talk with, if everybody understands which bank you mean or which supermarket you mean, it's very common to use "the." If you say, "I'm at a bank," or "I'm at a supermarket," it sounds like you're at a place that's new to everybody. Or, if you say, "I'm at a mountain," it sounds like you're at a mountain the other person doesn't know about. That's why we use "the" in these cases.
The reason "a" is before party or concert is because, maybe, there's a chance the other person doesn't know which party you mean or which concert you mean. If you're talking to somebody in your friend group, and they know about a party or some event that's happening on a certain day or a certain night, you might say, "Oh, I'm at the party right now." In that case, very natural, totally correct to say, "I'm at the party," or here, "I'm at the concert. That's also totally natural to use. So, just keep in mind, if it's a place that the other person knows about, use "the." Or, if it's a place you go in your community, use "the." If it's something that the other person probably doesn't know about or it's new information, use "a."
One more point about places and buildings with "at." We use "in" when it's important to express being inside a building or space. So, lots of people ask like, "What's the difference between 'in' or 'at'? Like, should I use 'in the bank' or 'in the supermarket,' or 'at the bank' or 'at the supermarket'? Is it correct?" And, the answer is, sometimes, it's correct. Yes. So, when people ask like, "Should I use 'in' with this, or should I use 'at' with this?" It's up to you. it's up to the situation. So, for example, with "in the supermarket" versus "at the supermarket." If you want to express being inside the supermarket, if it's important to express that you are inside the supermarket, you can use "in." "I'm in the supermarket." So, for example, if you want to meet someone at the supermarket, and you go inside, you might contact them and say, "Hey! I'm in the supermarket right now. Please come meet me." So, using "in" gives that feeling of being inside someplace. You can also use it in a situation like a party, as well. "Oh, I'm in the party right now," or "I'm in a meeting right now," is another thing you might hear. So, you can take a look at the video I made about how to use the preposition "in" for more details about that. But, please keep in mind, we use "in" when we want to refer to being inside a space.
Okay. So, let's continue on then to the next group. The next way that we use "at" is with time expressions. We use "at" before a time of day. For example, "at 2 p.m." or "at 10:30." We can also use it before a word that refers to a time of day. Like, "at noon." So, "noon" means 12 o'clock. So, 12 p.m. in the day. Or, "at midnight." So, "at 12 o'clock," night, nighttime. "At night" is another expression we use. So, we use "at" before these points in time, before these times of day, to express the time something happens or something happened in the past or the time that something is going to happen. So, for example, "Let's meet at 2 p.m." that's the schedule for the meeting in the future. Or, "We met at 2 p.m." So, past activity. So, we use time expressions with "at" to talk about like a schedule for something.
A note about this point. People ask about other prepositions with time expressions. So, the preposition "in" is used before a length of time. Like, five minutes, or two hours, or three years. This expresses duration. So, how long something happened? Or, how long it took to do something? So, "in" and "at" have very different uses. The preposition "by" is also very commonly used before a time expression. But, "by" is used before a point in time to express a deadline. So, this is very different from "at." When we say, "by 2 p.m.," it means something is going to be finished by 2 p.m. Something has a deadline of 2 p.m. If we say "at 2 p.m., it just means something is going to happen at that time. So, please keep this in mind. This is a key difference between "by" and "at."
Okay. So, let's continue on to the last group here. The last group is common expressions with "at." So, I've chosen a few that I hope are kind of helpful for you, that you might not know the meaning of. Let's talk about this first one here then, "at least," at least. So, "at least" expresses something positive in a negative situation. So, here's an example sentence. "Oh no! I forgot my wallet. At least I have my phone. I can pay for things digitally." So, we use "at least" when we want to show there's a bad situation, a negative situation, but we have this positive point inside it. So, in this case, the negative situation is "I forgot my wallet." But, I want to express there's this other good thing or there's some way that I can kind of save the situation. So, I use "at least" to do that. "At least I have my phone," that means I have this positive thing inside this bad situation that can help me in some way. So, this is "at least."
Another very common expression with "at" is "at first." "At first" means initially, or in the beginning. So, we commonly use this when we want to talk about our first idea maybe, or our first thought about something. And then, we think about it, or after some point in time, we've changed our idea. So, an example of this, "At first, I thought I would vacation in Hawaii this summer. But then I realized how expensive tickets are and made different plans." So, this is showing two ideas. "at first," I thought thing A, but after some time, I decided to do thing B. So, it's very common to present "at first" with a "but then" statement. So, this is another very common way we use "a."
Two more. First one is "at length," at length. This means for a long time. "At length" tends to sound a little bit more formal. We kind of use it in polite situations when we want to express for a long time. And, sometimes, for a long time can have a negative feel to it, if we express like kind of negative feelings. "At length" can mean just that someone spoke for a long time, but it doesn't have always such a negative feel about it. So, an example of this, "The president spoke at length about the importance of work-life balance," the president spoke at length. So, we could replace "at length" with for a very long time in the sentence, and it would still be correct. "The president spoke for a very long time about the importance of work-life balance." But, "at length" sounds a little bit more polite. It sounds a little more kind of professional than for a long time.
Okay. The last one I included here is "at once," at once. So, "at once" is a kind of polite or formal expression which means immediately or right away, right now. So, we use this in like customer service situations. For example, "We'll fix this error at once," "We'll fix this error at once." That means right away. "We'll fix this error immediately, right now." So, you might hear "at once" used in these polite customer service-related situations.
So, these are just a couple of expressions that I chose that I thought would be helpful to introduce. There are many, many expressions that use "at." So, please keep in mind -- unfortunately, unlike this point and this point, there's not an easy rule for the meanings of "at" or knowing when to use "at" in these kinds of expressions. You can consider them kind of like vocabulary words to study, or short phrases to study. So, please keep this in mind as you are reading and listening. But, I hope that this was a helpful introduction to how to use this preposition. Thanks very much for watching this lesson, and I will see you again soon. Bye-bye.

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