VOA名师答疑2023--'In Which' and 'To Which'

'In Which' and 'To Which'

Hello! This week on Ask a Teacher, we answer a question about the use of prepositions² with "which."

Question

Dear VOA Ask a Teacher,

I am Shohei from Japan. I enjoy many contents of VOA learning³ English every day. I have a grammatical⁴ question for using "which" such as, in which, of which, from which, and so on. How do native English speakers immediately decide to use the correct preposition¹? I cannot understand these differences.

Best regards,

Thank you (^^)!

Answer

Thank you for writing, Shohei. This is a good question.

When we use "which" with a preposition, it is mostly in written English to note place, time, or manner (or the way that something is happening.)

The most often used prepositions with "which" are "in" and "to." The Corpus of Contemporary⁵ American English shows that "in" is used five times more often than "to." And they both make up more than 60 percent of all uses of a preposition with "which."

Many times, "in which" and "to which" are used as part of an expression in English. They include "the extent⁶ to which," "the way in which," and "the manner in which." Here are some examples:

We can explore the way in which nature changes.

Our future depends on the extent to which humans can stop climate change.

Fans were not pleased with the manner in which the trainer talked about the team.

One more thing, if you're not sure which preposition to use with "which", a good choice is "in" because it's used the most often.

Please let us know if this explanation has helped you, Shohei.

Do you have a question about American English? Send us an email at [email protected].

And that's Ask a Teacher.

I'm Gena Bennett.

Gena Bennett wrote this lesson for VOA Learning English.

1 preposition   

n.介词

参考例句：

• You should cancel this preposition in the sentence.你应该删去句子中的这个介词。
• We use different preposition to talk about time,days,months and seasons.我们用不动的介词来谈论时间，日，月和季节等。

2 prepositions   

n.介词( preposition的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• She lays a lot of emphasis on the usage of prepositions. 她把重点放在介词的使用上。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Prepositions and conjunctions are particles. 介词和连词是小品词。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 learning   

n.学问，学识，学习；动词learn的现在分词

参考例句：

• When you are learning to ride a bicycle,you often fall off.初学骑自行车时，常会从车上掉下来。
• Learning languages isn't just a matter of remembering words.学习语言不仅仅是记些单词的事。

4 grammatical   

adj.语法的，符合语法规则的

参考例句：

• His composition is excellent except for some grammatical mistakes.他的作文写得很好，只有几处语法错误。
• He can barely form a grammatical sentence.他几乎造不出合乎语法的句子。

5 contemporary   

n.同时代的人；adj.同时代的，同时，属于同一时期的

参考例句：

• Dickens was contemporary with Thackeray.狄更斯与萨克莱属于同一时代。
• She is very much alive to contemporary issues.她对当代的问题十分注意。

6 extent   

n.程度，范围，限度；广度，宽度，大小

参考例句：

• The new race track is nearly six miles in extent. 这条新跑道将近六英里长。
• What's the extent of the damage? 损坏的程度如何?