Written by Lilian Ndongmo. ESL Teacher

Matching the right verb with the right preposition is crucial for two reasons:

1. It helps make your sentence grammatically  correct.
2. It helps make your message correct and comprehensible.

Mistakes in structure and comprehension usually occur when the right preposition isn’t used.

Let’s take this sentence for example: Jessica is married with John.

This is a common mistake that many English learners make. In this situation, “married with” someone doesn’t exist in English!

You marry someone. You do not marry with someone.

Therefore, the correct preposition to use in our example above is: Jessica is married to John.

Prepositions that are preceded by verbs as in the example above are called dependent prepositions. These prepositions are called dependent prepositions because they depend on the meaning of the word that precedes them.   For this reason, the right preposition must be used with the right verb.

Below are verbs that are followed by the preposition “with”. Note that the preposition can be followed by a noun or a gerund. Learn more about gerunds here.

Agree with

Annoyed with

Bored with

Careful with

Compete with

Consistent with

Covered with

Deal with

Entrust with

Equipped with

Help with

Interfere with

Play with

Provide with

Reason with

Put up with

Satisfied with

Unite with

Upset with

Write with

 Examples:

1. I am satisfied with my performance in the exam.
2. This piece of information is consistent with what is written in the article.
3. He’s such an excellent athlete. It’s hard to compete with him.
4. Since I was not provided with all the ingredients, I couldn’t prepare a delicious meal.
5. The blue collar worker is not equipped with the right tools to do his job properly.