I have gotten to prepositions in my TEFL course. These are a bit of a sticky wicket. The course is, from what I can gather, originally British, but adapted for Americans. Sort of.
The folks that pop up in the little intro and explanation videos speak with Standard American accents. The instructors in the class example videos are British. The woman is Scottish and the man speaks in an English way that someone from there would be able to identify instantly. I cannot.
This was all fine until we got to prepositions. In the intro video, the guy, who speaks as if he is American, said what we do things “at” the weekend. An imposter! Americans don’t say “at the weekend!” We say “on the weekend.” What is this man playing at?
I could accept this discrepancy until I got to the quiz. I was asked to insert the preposition in the sentence “Ollie wants to go home ___ Christmas this year to visit his family.” I mean, of course Ollie is British. I know that. We don’t call people Ollie in the States very often. It’s actually more awkward to say with an American accent than with a British one.
Still, this was my quiz, dammit, so I’m going to choose what I think is the proper preposition: on. I want to go home on Christmas. But no! I get marked wrong! Stupid Ollie wants to go home AT Christmas and eat figgy pudding and pull crackers and wear unflattering paper crowns.
I went back and “corrected” my answer, seething the whole time. My ancestors didn't fight in the Revolution so I could go home AT Christmas.
I’ll be going to Boston Harbor on the weekend — not AT the weekend — and I might need to buy a cup of tea at Dunkin’ Donuts and toss it in. Just to feel like less of a traitor. In this time of turmoil, I feel the need to hang on to the things that still stand in this country, including our preferred prepositions.
Prepositions are where the rubber hits the road for British and American speakers.
With Asian students I had to insist on plurals of nouns with numbers. Students wanted to say "I sold three book." Their explanation was that the reader/listener understands because of the number. The audience might understand but expects books to be plural. That's how English is, kids!