Prepositional Predicament

This is the name I myself gave to a piece I read in a magazine this morning. Here is the piece itself:

For a variety of reasons, learning English prepositions is notoriously difficult and a slow, gradual process for English as a Second Language (ESL) students. To begin, English prepositions typically are short, single-syllable or two-syllable words that are seldom stressed when speaking and therefore often not articulated clearly or heard distinctly. Another problem is that prepositions are often conceptually different from one language to the next, and direct translation cannot be relied on. For example, in English “we walk in the rain,” whereas in French we “walk under the rain (marcher sous la pluie).” Both formulations seem to make the same intrinsic sense; however, it would strike most English speakers as odd to say that we walk under the rain! This lack of correspondence means that a one-to-one translation will produce an ungrammatical sentence.
These difficulties are compounded by the loose grammatical rules governing the use of English prepositions. For example, one rule states that the prepositions at, on, and in are used to designate expressions of time. However, these very same prepositions also designate expressions of place and location, which often makes the selection of a preposition a matter of guesswork. The uncertainty about what preposition to use even extends to differences within British and American English. For example, in British (and South African) English it is common to speak of “filling in a form,” while American English speaks of “filling out a form.” The problem is further exacerbated by regional or social varieties of English that use prepositions in idiosyncratic ways. Then there are those unhelpful (even archaic) rules about prepositions that continue to hold sway, such as the rule about not ending a sentence with a preposition. As Winston Churchill tellingly joked, “The rule which forbids ending a sentence with a preposition is the kind of nonsense up with which I will not put.”