Teaching English as a Foreign Language

Chapter 15: Stop Press! Student to Deliver Sentence 217

When you mention the person who receives the action, you’re talking about

an indirect object. An indirect object goes after the verb and before the direct

object: The dog brings its owner the newspaper.

The indirect object may be a thing not a person but it still receives the action,

as in: John made the book a new cover.

Placing an object with a transitive verb

However some verbs, called transitive verbs need an object. For example

the verb ’to drop’ is transitive. In the sentence, ‘I dropped the cup’, ‘I’ is the

subject, ‘dropped’ is the verb and ‘the cup’ is the object. If you’re not sure

whether or not a verb is transitive, use a dictionary to check. Transitive verbs

are listed with a T or tr in brackets next to the verb and the definition often

includes something or somebody to emphasise that you need a direct object.

Standing in with object pronouns

You use ‘her’ not ‘she’ as the object. So these are the object pronouns that

replace nouns and phrases:

Subject pronoun Object pronoun

I me

you you

he him

she her

it it

we us

they them

Proposing Prepositions

Prepositions are words that come before nouns and pronouns and show how

words in a sentence relate to each other in terms of amount, direction, time,

place, cause, or manner. Here are a few examples:

✓ Prepositions of manner: by, via

✓ Prepositions of amount: about, over

✓ Prepositions of time: before, after

✓ Prepositions of direction: into, towards

✓ Prepositions of place: next to, in front of

✓ Prepositions of cause: because, due to