Question

Choose the appropriate preposition and fill in the blank:
Do not listen ______ what he says. He does not know what he is talking about.
a. for
b. on
c. to
d. None of these

Answer 1

Hint: A preposition is a word that sits before a noun. ‘Pre’ in ‘preposition’ means before. Therefore, the position of a preposition is before a noun. Prepositions link sentences and words together.

Complete answer:
Let us apply option a, which is ‘for’. ‘Do not listen for what he says’ does not make any sense. Usually, ‘listen for’ is used when you do something for someone. For example, I have ordered a pizza. I am listening for the doorbell. That means that I am expecting something to come so I am waiting for the pizza delivery-man. So, option a is wrong.
Option b, when applied, makes the sentence read as follows- ‘Do not listen on what he says’. This does not make sense either as to ‘listen on’ does not have any meaning.
On applying option c, the sentence becomes ‘Do not listen to what he says’. This makes perfect sense as ‘listen to’ means to hear or obey what someone is saying. Another example is ‘I do not want to listen to music’. Thus, option c is the correct answer.
Option d is for confusing the students that none of the options given might be correct.

Note: An effective way of answering such questions is to apply each option and see if the sentence makes sense. Sometimes a preposition might be grammatically correct with a word but it may be incorrect when the context of the sentence is considered. For example, ‘listen for’ is a correct phrase but it is not correct when it is applied to the given sentence.