Practice Makes Perfect

Je songe à prendre ma retraite (I’m thinking of retiring).

Things are simpler in English because the only preposition we need to worry about is to, 

which functions as an infinitive marker. For example, if a verb is standing alone, we have no 

idea of its form, because modern English does not have an infinitive ending. For all practical 

purposes, it’s just a word. On the other hand, to read and to write are infinitives. In French, 

when we write the word parler, we know it’s an infinitive, because we recognize the infinitive 

ending -er.

So how do we learn when to drop the preposition and how to choose among de, à, sur, and 

so on? While we wait for some genius to discover a magic formula, we can take advantage of a 

mnemonic technique, which has helped us learn the correct gender of a noun. When you learned 

the word moon, you memorized it as la lune, not just lune. So when you form a mental image of 

a particular infinitive that isn’t followed by a preposition, you can visualize it followed by a 

“zero”—for example, vouloir 0. You will then know that Je veux lire is correct!

When you run into verbs that must be followed by a preposition, look for patterns, and 

memorize them, according to preposition, always forming a unit consisting of a verb and its 

preposition. Imagine you’re learning the verb apprendre. If you memorize it as apprendre à, 

you will always use the correct preposition.