Hi Lawrence, I don’t think there are any ‘small villages’ near Santa Monica and I also don’t think ‘at a small village’ is idiomatic English. Also, I think no native speaker would every say ‘I live in a small village’ let alone ‘I live at a small village’.
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Torsten, if the village is geographically ‘locatable’ (so to say), we use ‘at’, and if it is a vast area not being identifiable, we use ‘in’.
Further, we know that it is always ‘on a farm’. If so, we have these two options: (B) on – at – on and (D) on – in – at.
Then, naturally, we have got to go for the option ‘on a village’ which is unacceptable for it does not make good grammatical or semantic sense.
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No, we don’t say ‘I live at a village’ but ‘I live in a village’ as you can see below.
Also, why would you call ‘a vast area’ a ‘a small village’? Doesn’t make any sense.
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Torsten, there are villages with, say, about 20-25 families, living together in clusters, in the interior parts where the area of a village is so small that it is easily identifiable. You have to travel farther if you want to see another village.
As regards a normal village extending to a vast area, we say ‘they live in a village far away from the town’. (So, I don’t disagree with your contention)
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Hi Andrea, good to see we are on the same page 
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Yep!! I think the multiple choice options are misleading. Perhaps someone made a mistake with the correct option. 
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Evern if the preposition was correct, I don’t think any American would say that they ‘live in a small village’.
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@Torsten I would still go with ‘live in a small village’. It is the only option I think and seems natural to say.
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For me when talking about where you live I would use ‘in’ for village, city, town or whatever regardless of the size of the location simply because you are ‘inside’ the place. ‘At’ is more associated with position within a location where you reside. You live in a house in the village at the corner of Bridge Road, at junction 34 of the motorway. We stopped to admire the gardens at a beauty spot in the village.
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I agree with and here is what I mean:
Quote from StackExchange:
As others have explained, the term ‘village’ is used in the US as a technical designation, a governmental-legalistic denomination.
But hardly anywhere in the US would someone use the term ‘village’ as a generic term for a very small settlement. That is, there is the official usage ‘the village of East Davenport, Iowa’, but never, ever, would someone say ‘I live in a village outside of the main town’. In that sense, no one would describe or refer to where they live as ‘a village’. Americans would use the term for a place in another country, but not for anywhere in the US.
‘You live in a village’ is not particularly derogatory, it just sounds weird if talking about some place in the US.
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@Torsten I understand. However, if you’re not talking about the US…then you’ll find villages in other countries. You’ll definitely find villages in Africa
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I also found this example from a website. It is slightly different but there are 5 options for the answer.
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And I’ve found tihs:
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That’s cool! So true too!
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Thanks for al the replies, I certainly learned more about how to think through the answer in cases like this.
I should also point out that Andrea found the “original” exercise. I made adjustments with places in the United States but it seems I did not perform a very good job at that. To tell the truth, when writing Santa Monica I simply used a search engine to search for “smaller city USA” or something like that.
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Hi Marco, so you are using MeSalva! to create English language exercises for your Steam Community? Is that correct? If so we could explore ideas on how we can work together more closely.
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So, Alan, as you say, we need to use the preposition ‘in’ no matter what size the village is. Okay, but the question (even the original, which seems to have disregarded the principles of MCQs) is certainly defective as we are unable to select the appropriate option.
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Precisely Torsten, that is correct. Sure thing, it’d be great.
It seems preposition is probably one of the themes that generates most confusion, even among more experienced people. Even myself when asked to give a clear answer on why I’ve chosen certain prepositions the best thing I can come up with is “because it sounds better”, as I’ve said earlier in this topic.
I’ll probably focus on clearer exercises from English Best.
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All these answers are correct, but I would say: ‘I live on a farm.’
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
If I’m wrong they can always send me to Coventry, although this would be a very heavy punishment for me, dear Ainspeed.
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