Speaker 1: It's time for another podcast English lesson You like it right,
it's good for you to listen to English and a
podcast like this, well, it's great for learning new conversational
phrases like the ones with it.
Speaker 2: Welcome to another Happy English podcast, coming to you from
New York City. And here's your English teacher, Michael.
Speaker 1: Alright, thank you John, and thanks everyone. It's Michael here
from Happy English and I help people speak English better.
And this is Happy English Podcast, Episode eight eleven. It's
all about it. There are a lot of ways in
English you can use it. Essentially, it is a pronoun
and so it can be used to represent things that
were just mentioned, like I lost my key card. Have
you seen it? Here? It means my key card? And
I remember when I first met Alice. We met in
a place called Soho. Have you ever heard of it?
Casablanca is my favorite movie. I've seen it like ten times.
By the way, you may see the word spelled it
in the computer world. In that case, it's not pronounced it.
It's pronounced it and it stands for information technology. You
can use it as the subject of a sentence in
a variety of ways. And that's going to be the
focus for the rest of this lesson, starting off with
the four most common ways of using it. Time, weather, temperature,
and distance. You can say things like it's ten degrees
this morning, it's very sunny, it's already nine o'clock, it's
only three blocks to the convenience store, and these days
it gets pretty cool in the evenings. Here you can
also use the pattern it followed by an adjective followed
by four, like it's unnecessary for him to come to
the office today, or it's a mistake for the company
to fire Jack. It's important for your English that you
do something in English every day. You can also use
phrases like it's good for or it isn't good for,
like you shouldn't smoke, it isn't good for your health,
and why don't you read a book in English? It's
good for your vocabulary. In a similar way, we use
the pattern it followed by an adjective followed by two.
You can say things like it's good too, it's important to,
it's nice to and so on. It's important to study
every day, and I like having a drink, but it's
not good to drink alcohol every day. According to my accountant,
it's a good time to invest. And you know what,
it was nice to see you at the party last weekend.
I hope we can get together again soon. You can
also use the pattern it followed by an adjective followed
by a gerrand, you know, the ing verb like it's
worth going to Central Park when you come to New
York City. And maybe you're probably thinking it's hard trying
to remember all of this vocabulary, but I'm sure that
you feel the same way. I feel it's fun speaking
another language. And I try to tell Jack the other
day it's no use trying to convince the boss to
change her mind. She's so stubborn. And finally, for today,
when you want to mention the time someone needs to
do something, we usually use it as the subject of
a sentence, it took a week to finish that book.
Sometimes I hear people say things like I took a
week to finish that book. But in everyday conversational English,
it's more natural to use it as the subject of
this sentence. So you can say something like, it took
me a week to finish the book, or even better,
it took a week to finish that book. Remember you
don't need to use me in the sentence if it's
clear from the context that you are talking about yourself.
It took a week to finish that book, or it
took a few weeks to get settled in my new office.
I heard it takes Jack over an hour to get
to work. Keep in mind, the best way to remember
English like this and any other word or phrase in English,
is to take that word or phrase, write it in
a sentence that's true for you or true in your world,
and then memorize your sentences. Hey, did you know you
can get more practice using your English when you join
my podcast Learner's study group. There you can make new friends,
join us for live group lessons every week where we
practice these podcast lessons together. Plus you get access to
the pdf, transcript and audio download for every Happy English
podcast in the past and in the future. On top
of that, each episode has exercises where you can practice
this English point with speaking and writing checked by me.
To learn more, just visit Myhappy English dot com and
choose podcast lesson eight eleven. Remember, learning another language is
not easy, but it's not impossible, and I'm here to
help you on your journey.
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