Russian belongs to those languages in which there are cases. True, if they were not, then other pointers to the function of words in sentences, such as prepositions, postpositions, and also word order, would be used.
Traditionally, in the framework of the school curriculum in the Russian language, six cases are studied, connecting words in a sentence and indicating their syntactic role. Declination occurs by changing the endings of the nominal parts of speech: nouns, pronouns, numerals and adjectives.
For each of them you can ask a question that distinguishes one case from another. In addition, there are additional words to help with declination. For example, the prepositional case has the help words “think”, “dream”, “regret”, as well as case questions: “about whom?”, “In whom?”, “About what?”, “What?” with suitable prepositions.
It has quite a variety of meanings. If the prepositional case is connected with the questions “about whom?”, “About what?”, Then it can be consistent with both verbs and nouns. That is, it happens both verbal and adopted.
Verbal is used with various prepositions. For instance:
a) “about”, “about” - to dream about vacation, to think about salary;
b) "by" (meaning "after") - at the end of the school, upon receipt of the parcel;
c) “at” (to indicate landmarks or circumstances) - live at the estate, be registered at the theater, create at the department, attend the examination;
d) “in”, “in” as indicators of a place or object, if something or someone is inside — live in a city, live in a forest, sit in a hall, be in a courtyard, notice in a glance;
e) “on” as a pointer to the surface - in the East, in the sun, stand on the shore, lie on the couch; location indicator - to be at work, to be in a responsible position, to study at the faculty of philology; a pointer to the object over which the action is performed - focus on solving the problem, stop at the most interesting place; an index of conditions, circumstances or conditions accompanying the action - to be retired, to stay on vacation; a pointer to an object, which is an instrument or material, as well as an indicator of the time of action - ride a bicycle, cook in oil, play the violin.
Plural nouns are also consistent with it . For example: urban life.
The accepted prepositional case is used with nouns and verbal words governing the case - a report on Russian art, on the principles of combating smoking.
Often the adopted one is used with such pretexts as “in” and “on”, as well as with the preposition “o”, if it is necessary to indicate a sign, property or quality of an object. For example: sheepskin coat with sheepskin, leather-bound chronicle, a horse with four legs.
It happens that schoolchildren misuse the prepositional case, the endings are confused. For example: “Miss him,” instead of the correct option “Miss him.” “Hit it,” not “Hit it.”
If the student confuses the prepositional case with others, then he needs practice in the declension of nouns and other parts of speech. The most important thing is to emphasize and remember the endings during the exercises, which often depend on the pretext with which the word is used.