got on bus/taxi

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
1

I got on bus to my school.
We got on taxi for Tom’s house.

I wrote the sentences to mean, “I/we travelled on bus/taxi…respectively”.

Please help me on this.

2

Hi LE

The sentence “I got on the bus to my school.” would be OK, but not the best way to say what you want to say. That means that there was a bus which was scheduled to go to your school, and you boarded that bus.

It would be better to say: “I took the bus to school" or "I went to school by bus .” Those would be the most typical ways to say what you want to say.

However, talking about a taxi is different for a couple of reasons:

  1. You can “take a taxi (to a place)” but you cannot “get on a taxi” (unless you want to say that you climbed onto the roof of the taxi).

  2. Taxis are not usually regularly scheduled to go to certain destinations. Instead, you call a taxi and then tell the driver where he/she should go. Using he word ‘for’ would suggest that the taxi was regularly scheduled and destined for Tom’s house. Therefore, you cannot say “We took the taxi for Tom’s house.”

A correct sentence would be: “We took a taxi to Tom’s house.” or “We went to Tom’s house by taxi.”
.