Preposition and Its Special Uses: Part 1

            

Introduction

A preposition is defined as a word that links a noun, pronoun, or noun phrase to some other part of the sentence. It usually comes before a noun, pronoun or noun phrase, hence the name, pre-position (that is, before the position of noun or pronoun).

A preposition is used to show direction, location, or time, or to introduce an object. Examples include: in, on, to, at, by, with, for, from, over, across, through, under etc.

Prepositions can be tricky for English learners, as there is no definite rule or formula for choosing a preposition. However, a regular usage through reading and listening can help learners identify the appropriate use of each of the prepositional words in a grammatical structure.

In this class, we want to consider the special use of the selected five among the commonest examples of preposition; others will come up in the subsequent posts. We are considering the following: on, in, for, of and to.

Here we go….

ON

i. Used to express a surface of something:

Examples
I put an egg on the kitchen table.
The paper is on my desk.

ii. Used to specify days and dates:

Examples
The garbage truck comes on Wednesdays.
I was born on the 14th day of June in 1988.

iii. Used to indicate an activity going on a device or machine, such as a phone or computer:

Examples
He is on the phone right now.
She has been on the computer since this morning.
My favorite movie will be on TV tonight.

iv. Used to indicate any outer part of the body:

Examples
The stick hit me on my shoulder.
He kissed me on my cheek.
I wear a ring on my finger.

v. Used to indicate the state of something:

Examples
Everything in this store is on sale.
The building is on fire.

IN

i. Used for unspecific times during a day, month, season, year:

Examples
She always reads newspapers in the morning.
In the summer, we have a rainy season for three weeks.
The new semester will start in March.

ii. Used to indicate a location or place:

Examples
She looked me directly in the eyes.
I am currently staying in a hotel.
My hometown is Los Angeles, which is in California.

iii. Used to indicate a shape, color, or size:

Examples
This painting is mostly in blue.
The students stood in a circle.
This jacket comes in four different sizes.

iv. Used to express while doing something:

Examples
In preparing for the final report, we revised the tone three times.
A catch phrase needs to be impressive in marketing a product.

v. Used to indicate a belief, opinion, interest, or feeling:

Examples
I believe in the next life.
We are not interested in gambling.

FOR

i. Used to indicate the use of something:

Examples
This place is for exhibitions and shows.
I baked a cake for your birthday.
I put a note on the door for privacy.
She has been studying hard for the final exam.

ii. Used to mean because of:

Examples
I am so happy for you.
We feel deeply sorry for your loss.
For this reason, I’ve decided to quit this job.

iii. Used to indicate time or duration:

Examples
He’s been famous for many decades.
I attended the university for one year.

OF

i. Used for belonging to, relating to, or connected with:

Examples
The secret of this game is that you can’t ever win.
The highlight of the show is at the end.
The first page of the book describes the author’s profile.
I always dreamed of being rich and famous.

ii. Used to indicate reference:

Examples
I got married in the summer of 2000.
This is a picture of my family.
I got a discount of 10 percent on the purchase.

iii. Used to indicate an amount or number:

Examples
I drank three cups of milk.
A large number of people gathered to protest.
I had only four hours of sleep during the last two days..

TO

i. Used to indicate the direction of place, person, or thing that someone or something moves toward

Examples
I am heading to the entrance of the building.
The package was mailed to Mr. Kim yesterday.
All of us went to the movie theater.
Please send it back to me.

ii. Used to indicate a limit or an ending point:

Examples
The snow was piled up to the roof.
The stock prices rose up to 100 dollars.

iii. Used to indicate relationship:

Examples
This letter is very important to your admission.
My answer to your question is in this envelop.
Do not respond to every little thing in your life.

iv. Used to indicate a time or a period:

Examples
I work nine to six, Monday to Friday.
It is now 10 to five. (In other words, it is 4:50.)

Look out for the follow up class…

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The Basic Structure of the Cell in Animals and Plants

Introduction

The cell is the basic functional and structural unit of life. Human beings are multi-cellular animals. What this means is that we humans are made of many cells of cells as opposed to unicellular organisms which are composed of only one cell. The cells in a lot of multi-cellular animals and plants are specialized.

This means that each of them carries out a specific function and when all the cells combine together with their functions, they can share out the processes of life. Each cell is dependent on the other and all of them function collaboratively to support the diverse processes in an organism.

Below are examples of some specialized animal and plant cells, together with their functions and special features.

Types of Animal Cell

1.     Red Blood Cell: The red blood cell has large surface area for oxygen to pass through. It’s major function is to transport oxygen round the body. The red blood cell contains haemoglobin, which reacts with oxygen to form oxyhaemoglobin.

2.     Nerve Cells: Nerve cells transport nervous impulses to various parts of the body. It has a long connection at each end and has the capacity to carry electrical signals.

3.     Female Reproductive Cell: This is also known as the egg cell. The egg cell’s function is to combine with the male cell, and subsequently to make food available for the new cell that was formed  The egg cell is large and contains a lot of cytoplasm.

4.     Male Reproductive Cell: This is also known as the sperm cell. The sperm cell function is to travel up and meet with egg cell for a fusion to form a zygote. The sperm cell has an elongated tail for swimming as well as a head which enables it to get attached with the female egg cell for a fusion.

Types of Plant Cells

1.        Root hair cell: The root hair cell absorbs water and minerals from the soil. It has a large surface area.

2.       Leaf cell: The leaf cell absorbs sunlight for the process of photosynthesis. It has large surface area and lots of chloroplasts

Comparison chart between plant and animal cell

Plant and animal cells have quite a few differences and similarities. For instance, animal cells do not have a cell wall or chloroplasts but plant cells have them. Animal cells are round and irregular in shape whereas plant cells have fixed rectangular shapes.

The table below makes it clearer.

S/NO	Features	Animal Cell	Plant Cell
1	Cell wall	Absent	Present- formed from cellulose; hence it is called cellulose cell wall
2	Shape	Round or irregular shape	Rectangular or fixed shape
3	Vacoule	Contains one or more small vacuoles	Has one central vacuole that occupies about 90% of cell volume
4	Centrioles	Present in all animal cells	Only present in lower plant forms
5	Chloroplast	Absent	Plants have both chloroplasts and chlorophyll because they are autotrophs that manufacture their own food
6	Cytoplasm	Present	Present
7	Endoplasmic Reticulum	Present	Present
8	Ribosomes	Present	Present
9	Mitochondria	Present	Present
10	Plastids	Absent	Present
11	Golgi Apparatus	Present	Present
12	Plasma membrane	Have only cell membrane	Have a cell wall and a cell membrane
13	Microtubules/Microfilaments	Present	Present
14	Flagella	May be found in some animal cells	May be found in some plant cells
15	Lysosomes	Occur in cytoplasm	Usually not present
16	Nucleus	Present	Present
17	Cilia	Present	Very rare

In conclusion, both the animal cells and plant cells contain:

•       Cell membrane

•       Cytoplasm

•       Nucleus

Plant cells in addition to possessing these features also found in
animal cells, has:

•       Chloroplasts

•       Vacuole

•       Cell wall

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Introduction to Financial Accounting: Book Keeping and Accounting

Overview

Accounting is very essential in the life of any organization. And while there are different fields of study in Accounting, Financial accounting stands out among all because of its place in determining the true health of an organization.

Financial accounting has to do with the money-related aspect of every business life. Hence, wherever there is a question of money, financial accounting comes up. Even organizations that are said to be not-for-profit-making organizations nonetheless deal with money, hence the need to practice accounting in their organizational processes. The two major stages of financial accounting are book-keeping and accounting.

Meaning of Bookkeeping and Accounting:

Bookkeeping Defined:

Bookkeeping is simply defined as the systematic recording of business transactions in such a way that the financial position of the given business can be determined at a specified period. Simply put, bookkeeping is the recording aspect of the broader stage, accounting. And this must follow a systemic standard, which is presented periodically.

Accounting Defined:

Accounting is the broader stage of financial accounting. It is the process of collecting, collating, recording, classifying, analyzing, interpreting and communicating the financial statement of an organization to enable managers and other users make informed decisions.

You can see from the definition that accounting begins way right the moment transactional contracts are entered into, even before recordings are made; and goes beyond that until the final statement is presented so that those who need it can make informed decisions.

Importance of Accounting and Bookkeeping

i.                     Needed for decision making;

ii.                   Provides permanent records for business transactions;

iii.                  Helps in the determination of the profitability of a business concern;

iv.                 Serves as checks against fraudulent practices;

v.                   Used for tax assessment;

vi.                 Facilitates reference making to past transactions;

vii.                Facilitates inter-firm comparison;

viii.              Shows the financial position of an organization at a given period.

Users of Accounting Information

The principal users of financial accounting report and what they need it for are as follows:

a.       Owners/Managers: They need the financial accounting information to ascertain the profitability of the business as to decide on whether to continue or discontinue the venture as well as the possible measures to take to remedy any negative trend.

b.      Employees: Employees need to be sure if they are riding on a steady or sinking ship so that they quickly take the right decision that guarantees the desired future.

c.       Competitors: Their interest in the financial reporting of a rival company is just to take advantage of any slip as well work towards meeting up in the midst of the competition.

d.      Government/Tax authorities: The tax authorities under the government would want to know the true position of the profit before tax (PBT) of a given organization, so that they can rightly charge the due tax for the government. This is why Public Limited Liability companies are obliged by law to publish their annual financial report.

e.      Creditors: Creditors would want to be sure they are dealing with a healthy company in terms of their level of financial liquidity; and not with one that is near to insolvency. And the only way to ascertain this is by studying their financial report.

f.        Banks: Banks like creditors would not guarantee a company any credit facility if they learn that the company is not meeting up with its financial obligation. And all they need to know this is to carefully go through the company’s financial statement.

g.       Financial analysts: Financial accounting reports help financial analysts observe trends, which enables them make future predictions, especially when advising their clients on investment portfolios.

h.      The general public: The general public like every other user of financial accounting reports want to be in the know about the financial state of the organization they are dealing, as nobody would want to be associated with a crumbling venture. Hence, they need the financial accounting report to make an informed decision.

Conclusion

Financial accounting reporting is essential for the health of any organization, including not-for-profit-making outfits. And every person, especially organizational managers need at least a basic knowledge of how bookkeeping and accounting works.

If you have ever handled money, you need financial accounting knowledge.

                               

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Nouns: Major Classifications (PART 1)

Nouns have been defined in our previous lesson as words used as names of persons, animals, places, things, ideas as well as events.

In this study, we are looking at the major classifications of noun. This will help learners identify nouns easily irrespective of whatever form it takes in a grammatical structure. Nouns are of diverse types and classifications, but here we want to consider the first major classifications of noun.

Major Classification

We are considering the following 4 types of noun:

1.     Proper noun

2.     Common noun

3.     Collective noun

4.     Compound noun

Proper Noun

Proper noun is defined as a specific name given to a particular person, place, or thing. Examples include: Mary, Segun, Frankfurt College, Japan, Azikiwe Road, River Niger, Edo etc.

One striking feature of a proper noun is that it begins with an upper case letter irrespective of its position in a grammatical structure.

Examples in sentences

i.                    I travelled to Madrid to meet with Mr Raul, my former teacher at Lexley College, London.

ii.                  Clara left Nigeria for the first time in her life on an excursion to the Maghreb Park in Libya.

Each of the underlined words in the above sentences is a proper noun, hence was started with a capital letter irrespective of its position in the sentence.

Common Noun

Common noun represents the general name given to a particular set of nouns with same attribute. No one member of that group lays hold on that name specifically. E.g., animal, boy, school, country, street, hospital, book, car, dress, fruit etc.

Examples in sentences

i.                    There are over fifty countries in Africa.

ii.                  Our teachers are trained specialists in their job.

iii.                My father promised to buy my mother a car.

Note: Common nouns are written beginning with small letters, except where they are used to begin a sentence.

Collective Nouns

Collective noun is a name given to a particular noun in its group formation, i.e. when a given noun gathers as a group. Think of say, five to ten armed robbers gathered together as a single group. Instead of referring to them as ten or five armed robbers, the most appropriate thing to do is to use their collective name- in this case; gang of armed robbers- gang here is the collective name.

Examples of most popular collective nouns

S/NO	NOUN GROUP	COLLECTIVE NAME
1.	Soldiers	Troop/Army/Battalion of soldiers
2.	Football players	Team of players
3.	Keys/Bananas	Bunch of keys/bananas
4.	Dancers	Troupe of dancers
5.	Singers	Choir of singers
6.	Sheep	Flock of sheep
7.	Cattle	Herd of cattle
8.	Cars	Fleet of cars
9.	Flowers	Bouquet of flowers
10.	Sailors	Crew of sailors
11.	Teachers/Workers	Staff of teachers/workers
12.	Students	Class of students
13.	Musicians	Band of musicians
14.	Worshippers	Congregation of worshippers
15.	Rioters	Mob of rioters
16.	Angels	Host of angels

Examples in sentences

i.                    The shepherd took the flock to the open field for pasture.

ii.                  The pastor delivered a sermon to the congregation.

iii.                To be a member of the choir, one needs to learn the rudiments of music.

Compound Nouns

Compound nouns are nouns formed by a combination of two or more independent words, with or without a hyphen in between. E.g., meatpie (meat+pie), pancake (pan+cake), classroom (class+room), lunchpad (launch+pad), blackboard (black+board), mother-in-law (mother+in+law), governor-general (governor+general) etc.

Examples in sentences

i.                    John misplaced his father’s suitcase.

ii.                  Mr. Smith is the new Attorney-general of the federation.

iii.                My step-mother is a classroom teacher.

Exercises

1.     In a tabular format, place the following nouns under the appropriate headings of Proper noun, Common noun, Collective noun, Compound noun.

(school, beverage, Jude, France, bunch, armchair, King’s College, runners-up, galaxy, host, battalion, Lake Chad, chair, lipstick, funfair, soup).

2.     Make a correct sentence each of the following types of noun:

a.     Proper noun

b.     Common noun

c.      Collective noun

d.     Compound noun

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