Debut Flash: 'Lesson 2. Prepositions.' by Stacie Bates

Lesson 2. Prepositions: to, of, on, behind, before, though, between, beneath, under, among, beside, across, near, under, with and within, over. 

This lesson focuses on prepositions in the context of a journey for pre-intermediate learners of English as a second language. In your last lesson, your teacher grammatically corrected your account of a journey. Your task is to fill in the missing prepositions taken from your original text.

I went to make my children’s beds one morning and saw tanks levelling their aim at their bedroom windows. It was no longer safe, we had…leave...it was too late. I wanted my husband…come with us, but he, ‘husbands,’ were not permitted. He said, not to worry, we should go ahead, he would be just…us. We managed to get our car out from...the rubble. It was tiring work. We drove…deserted streets, abandoned cars…abandoned homes. Our unimportant little town decimated. Bodies. Not knowing if friends and family lay…the bent and broken buildings. As we neared the station we found we were one…many all desperate to get…the train, to make it…the border. I went…my children, we got…the train, sandwiched…strangers and saw his face flat with the struggle of not showing emotion…the glass. Then gone. It felt an eternity and it felt an instant. A micro heartbeat and our lives changed forever. Poland. Sleeping…a makeshift canopy, an improvised hostel. Tired, waking ghosts we got…the second train. Germany. A refugee camp…Hannover. Day after boundless day I would join…other refuges in queues like stitches, patterns of people sewn…the pavements. Both hopeful and hopeless, waiting for visas, for papers, for an answer. I would cry every single day and try to hide my tears from the children. I met a British volunteer who spoke of safe passage…Europe, of the kindness of strangers, a home away from home where I can wait for my husband to be…us again and this, the endless day to be…