WEATHER (2)

Good morning. I hope you enjoyed your holiday yesterday (those of you who didn't have to work!). Today we will continue our topic of weather English. We are going to look at some grammar structures that we often use when talking about the weather. STRUCTURE 1: THEY Look at this example from Monday's Daily Vitamin: It [the weather] is absolutely awful. And they say it's going to rain all week long. Notice that in this example, the speaker seems to refer to someone else when he says "they say". Do you know who he is referring to? They is often used as an impersonal subject in English (se dice, dicen), but here the speaker could actually be referring to meteorologists or weather forecasters. When we talk about weather predictions, we often refer to these specialists with the pronoun they. Example 1: A: They said it was going to rain today, so you'd better take your umbrella. B: Rain? Are you sure? It looks like it's going to be a sunny day! A: No, no. The weatherman on Channel 14 is always right. STRUCTURE 2: BE GOING TO VERB; WILL VERB We use these future forms to give weather predictions if we are almost sure that our predictions will occur. It is common to start the prediction with the phrase "I think". Example 2: It's getting cloudy. I think it's going to rain. Example 3: Do you think we'll have nice weather here on Saturday for the association picnic? Remember that there will be no Daily Vitamin tomorrow. We will finish the topic of weather English on Friday, December 9th. If you have any questions about today's Daily Vitamin, you can post them in the Daily Vitamin Plus! section on our website. If you have any questions about how to use the Daily Vitamin Plus! section, please send us an email to vitamin@ziggurat.es. If you don' t have to work tomorrow, have a great day off!