student asking question

What does "spend a year on something"? Can I replace "on" to "to"? Like "spend a year to something".

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

We use "spend" to express the amount of time we use in doing something or being somewhere. In the clip, he is saying that he was expected to use a year of his time to complete his final thesis. In this case, I believe that replacing "on" with "to" would be incorrect as there is no resulting clause to follow "to". "On" is acceptable here at the end of the sentence but to would not be. "A paper you're supposed to spend a year to" would beg the question "to what?"

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