MULTIMEDIA-ENGLISH
Time Prepositions: at, on and in (Nick Shepherd)
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7:06
Video page URL
https://multimedia-english.com/videos/course/time-prepositions-at-on-and-in-nick-shepherd-5297
Description

A lesson explaining the different about the time prepositions AT, ON, IN, with a test at the end.


Note: Although he comments the exception "On the weekend", that's fine for American English but in British English it is more common to say "At the weekend" or "At weekends". This teacher is British, so it puzzles me he uses "on the weekend" but... oh well.

Transcript

Hello! In this video we're looking at time, with 'at', 'on' and 'in'. So 'I'll see you at seven!' - time, or, 'I'll see you on May 3rd' - date, or, 'I'll see you in 2016' – a year. Hope you enjoy it!

Now I'm going to write up the three words, I'll put 'at' over here, and then 'on' in the middle, and 'in' on the right. And now we've got three drawings. Here's the first one for 'at'. Here we go. OK, you can see that's a clock, that's a clock.

OK, now we'll go on to 'on'. This is a page from a calendar, May 3rd.

And finally, the last one, we'll go on to 'in' - yes, you've guessed it, it's the Olympic rings, and I'll just write 'London' up here and 'Rio.'

Now let's go back to 'at' - and I'll start off by writing in the time - 'at nine o'clock'. Well it's more like five past nine really but never mind. Here's another one - 'at noon', and another one I'll write in, 'at ten past two'. We have another video by the way on telling the time. And 'at midnight'. And that's 'at'. 'At' is about clock time.

Now let's move on to 'on', which is about days and dates. I'll just write 'on Monday' there, on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, and dates, 'on the third'. You could write 'on the third' or you could write 'on the third of May.' There are two ways of doing it. And the next one - 'on your birthday', 'on your birthday'. And the last one I'm going to write - 'on Christmas day', 'on Christmas day.'

Before we move onto 'in', I'd like to go back to 'at', and just remind ourselves that 'at' is a moment in time, 'on' is more like a little block of time, a day or a date, but 'in' is a bit different. 'In' is a period of time within which something happens. So our first example: the Olympic Games were held in London in 2012 and are to be held in Rio in 2016.

Now I said the period of time could be long or short, and I'll just write here 'in the morning' - it could be afternoon or evening - and I'll write again another one, 'in the day' - I'll come back to that later. And here's a slightly longer period of time, 'in the week', and a little bit longer still,
another one, 'in June' - could be 'in summer' or 'in winter.'

Now there are one or two exceptions to this. I've said 'in the week', which is right, but actually if it's the weekend, we say something different. I'll write here 'on the weekend', 'on the weekend'. And over on the right I said 'in the day', but for some reason we say 'at night', I'll just write here 'at night'. And finally over on the right we said 'in the morning', but if you qualified that, you would say 'on'. So 'on a summer evening'. 'In the evening' but 'on a summer evening'.

So, we've looked at 'at', with time, and don't forget 'at night', we've looked at 'on' with days and dates, and don't forget 'on the weekend' and 'on a summer evening', and we've looked at 'in' for periods of time. So now it's time for a little test, to see if you've learnt that.