When to use “in”, “on” and “at”

Question

I’m not a native speaker and I started English classes in school later than everyone else, so I started in 4th grade when everyone else has already 3 years of learning the basics, and since these are really basic words I never learned them in class

So, please, how do I know when to use each one? I can get by a bit as evidenced in this post, but a lot of times I get it wrong

In: Other

Answer 1

Those words are prepositions, and they’re used in two main ways. The first is to relate the physical relationship between two objects. If you place a book on top of a sealed box, the book is *on* the box. If you instead open the box and place the book inside, the book is *in* the box, etc. Once you see some [diagrams](https://www.theteachertreasury.com/free-resources/prepositions-printable-anchor-chart-poster) and get some practice, using prepositions in this way is pretty natural.

The other way to use prepositions though, whoo boy. Prepositions often appear in phrases with no obvious physical relationship to describe. For example, someone who is taking time off work is “on vacation,” but a vacation is not like a box that you can be physically on top of. It would make just as much sense to say that someone is “at vacation” or “in vacation.” What’s worse is that your native language might have a similar phrase that uses a different preposition! The unfortunate fact is that there’s simply no way to learn all the prepositions in these abstract phrases except through practice and repetition. People will surely cut you some slack as you learn.