Grammar ~19 min of the core left

Talk about the weather

After this lesson you can

I can say what the weather is like now and ask about the weather in another place.

Start the lesson Core 17–19 min · steps: 6 · optional: +2

Declared core time. Two of the core blocks carry no figure at all, so the real lesson is longer than this sum.

Grammar

3 min

The weather is said with an empty it — a subject that stands for no person and no thing. Many languages say this with no subject at all; English needs one.

It's cold today. the temperature is low today
It's sunny. you can see the sun
It's raining. rain is falling now
It's snowing. snow is falling now
What's the weather like today? you ask about the weather today

Note: It's raining is the continuous tense from lesson 25, just with the empty subject. And It's cold is be + an adjective, that is, lesson 2.

weather as a state weather as a process
It's cold. It's warm. It's windy. It's raining. It's snowing.
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Common learner errors

written for your language
1

The missing it

✗ Is cold today

✓ It's cold today

In Portuguese (Está frio, "is cold"), Spanish (Hace frío) or Italian (Piove, "rains") a weather sentence is complete with no subject. In English a sentence always has a subject, so here it is it.

2

Rain as a noun

✗ Today is rain

✓ It's raining today

In Japanese (kyō wa ame desu, "today is rain") or Indonesian (hari ini hujan, "today rain") the word for "rain" is enough. In English rain that is falling now is a verb in the continuous: It's raining.

3

The missing is

✗ It cold in winter → ✓ It's cold in winter. Chinese (jīntiān hěn lěng, "today very cold"), Vietnamese, Indonesian and Arabic put no verb "be" before an adjective, so learners drop it. In English be is always there: It is → It's.

4

The weather question word for word

✗ What weather is today?

✓ What's the weather like today?

or How's the weather today? — both are natural. Spanish (¿Qué tiempo hace hoy?, "what weather makes today") and Polish (Jaka jest dziś pogoda?, "what is today weather") ask with "what" alone, so learners copy that. In English what goes together with like.

Pronunciation

3 min

The contractions it's, isn't, it isn't are short and unstressed. The stress falls on the weather word: it's cold, it's raining.

The word weather /ˈweðə/ has the voiced /ð/ from lesson 4, and it sounds exactly the same as whether. You can tell them apart only by the meaning.

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Text

3 min

It's cold today and it's raining. I'm sitting at home. In my city it often rains in October. It isn't very warm. In summer it's usually sunny and hot. It sometimes rains in the evening. — What's the weather like in Italy? — It's warm and sunny.

Reading aloud

Exercises

8–10 min

1. Gap fill.

  1. cold today
  2. (rain) now
  3. sunny in summer
  4. (snow) today
Show the answers
It's, It's raining, It's, It's snowing.

2. Error correction.

  1. Is cold today.
  2. Today is rain.
  3. It cold in winter.
Show the answers
It's cold today. / Today it's cold; It's raining today. / Today it's raining. / It's rainy today; It's cold in winter. / In winter it's cold.

3. Matching.

  1. hot
  2. cold
  3. windy
  4. sunny
Show the answers
`hot` — summer; `cold` — winter; `windy` and `sunny` — any season.

4. Word order.

[ today / is / it / raining ] · [ the weather / what's / like / ? ]

Show the answers
It is raining today. / Today it is raining; What's the weather like?
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Summary

Covered

  • the empty subject it
  • the weather as a state and as a process
  • the question about the weather

Next — lesson 27: where you were.

End of the core

The lesson counts as done once the exercises are done. Everything after this is optional.

Lesson 27

optional

Vocabulary for your deck

14 words
  • weather /ˈweðə/ how it is outside: sun, rain, wind, hot or cold
  • cold /kəʊld/ with a low temperature; not warm
  • warm /wɔːm/ a little hot, in a nice way
  • hot /hɒt/ very warm
  • sunny /ˈsʌni/ with a lot of sun
  • windy /ˈwɪndi/ with a lot of wind
  • cloudy /ˈklaʊdi/ with a lot of clouds in the sky
  • rain /reɪn/ water that falls from the sky; to fall like this
  • snow /snəʊ/ soft white ice that falls from the sky; to fall like this
  • summer /ˈsʌmə/ the hottest season of the year
  • winter /ˈwɪntə/ the coldest season of the year
  • spring /sprɪŋ/ the season after winter
  • autumn /ˈɔːtəm/ the season after summer
  • degree /dɪˈɡriː/ the unit for temperature: 20 degrees

Writing

Four sentences: the weather today and the weather in your city in summer.

Example

It's cold today and it's raining. In summer it's usually hot and sunny. It sometimes rains in the evening.

Checklist

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Practise this lesson in the other sections

Dictationbased on this lesson Write down what you hear. The check shows every word that differs, and how. Write the dictation Reading aloudbased on this lesson Read the lesson text aloud — speech recognition highlights the words it did not catch. Read the text aloud Reading and listeningA1–C1 Texts at every level with comprehension questions; the transcript opens after you answer. Try it

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