Movement, Place, and Idiom Preposition Exercises

Movement prepositions describe direction — how something moves from one place to another. Use to for a destination: "I walked to the shop." Use into when entering an enclosed space: "She walked into the room." Use onto when moving to a surface: "The cat jumped onto the table." Use through for passing inside something from one end to the other: "We drove through the tunnel." Use across for crossing from one side of an open area to the other: "They walked across the park."

English also has fixed expressions for transport and places that do not follow the usual movement rules. We say "in a car" and "in a taxi" (small, private vehicles) but "on a bus," "on a train," and "on a plane" (large public transport you can walk around in). For places, we say "at home," "at work," and "at school" (activities or routines) but "in the office," "in the kitchen," and "in the classroom" (physical spaces inside a building). Learning these fixed expressions alongside the movement rules is essential for natural English and appears regularly in Cambridge A2 and B1 level examinations.