Prepositions and Collocations in Technical English
5 exercises — master fixed prepositional collocations used in IT documentation, code reviews, and stakeholder communication.
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
The payment service is _____ the authentication microservice for user validation.
"Dependent on" is the correct collocation. The preposition "on" follows "dependent" (adjective form) and "rely on". Common error: "dependent of" (influenced by French/Spanish). Related IT collocations: "reliant on", "contingent on", "based on". Note: the verb form is "depend on" (not "depend of").
2 / 5
This SDK is not _____ the latest version of Node.js.
"Compatible with" is the fixed collocation. The preposition is always "with" for compatibility, integration, and compliance. Other "with" collocations: "integrated with", "interfaced with", "consistent with", "aligned with". "Compatible to" and "compatible for" are errors found frequently in non-native technical writing.
3 / 5
The DevOps engineer is _____ maintaining the CI/CD pipelines and _____ the on-call rotation.
"Responsible for" — the preposition is always "for". "Part of" — the preposition is always "of". Both are fixed IT-context collocations. "Responsible of" is a direct translation error (from French/Spanish/Italian "responsable de"). "Part from" is not a standard English phrase in this context.
4 / 5
There is a significant _____ the performance of the monolith _____ the microservices architecture.
"Difference between X and Y" is the correct pattern when comparing two things. "Difference between" introduces the first item; "and" introduces the second. Common errors: "difference of" (wrong preposition) and "difference between X with Y" (wrong connector). Also correct: "a difference in performance" (when referring to a single metric), but when comparing two items, "between...and" is required.
5 / 5
The new caching layer had a positive _____ the database load and resulted _____ a 30% reduction in query times.
"Impact on" is the standard collocation — you have an impact ON something. "Resulted in" — "result in" is a phrasal verb meaning "to cause as an outcome". "Impact to" and "impact in" are common non-native errors. "Resulted to" is also incorrect — the correct preposition is "in" for results.