Learn Phrases The Time

To find out when something happens, ask questions beginning with What time does. An example of this is: ⁠What time does the soccer game start?. In response to a question like What time does the flight leave? you could say ⁠The flight leaves around 3:00 pm in the afternoon.

Use the sentence pattern How long is + ACTIVITY + going to take? to ask how long something will take. For example, ⁠How long is the meeting going to take?. A typical response will start with It will take…, as in ⁠It will take about an hour. Other questions that mean the same things as How long is this going to take? are ⁠How long will this take? and ⁠How long will this last?.

In English, there is a special way to describe something that you began in the past and continue to do now. In order to do this, you have to use the sentence pattern I have been + ACTIVITY + for + PERIOD OF TIME. An example of this is: ⁠I have been driving for hours. This means that you began to drive hours ago and continue to drive now. A response to I have been waiting for half an hour might be something like: ⁠I'm sorry that I'm late.

Most of the English-speaking world uses a 12 hour system instead of a 24 hour system like in many other countries. This means that you often have to add either am or pm to specify whether the time is between midnight and noon (am) or between noon and midnight (pm). So, for example, 9:00 am means 9:00 in the morning. Whereas 9:00 pm means 9:00 in the evening. English speakers will often leave out am or pm when the context is clear, which is meant. A question or a speaker's reaction would most likely be the typical response to a statement like this. Here is an example response to It's around 3:45 pm: ⁠Oh no, I think I'm going to be late for my next class!.

This is another way to say ⁠It's 3:15. It's quarter to three would be another way to say it's 2:45. Be careful when you use quarter after and quarter to. Quarter after is used when you would say it's fifteen minutes after… whereas quarter to is used when you'd say it's fifteen minutes to…. A typical response to a statement about time will usually be another question or the speaker's reaction to the time. For example, a response to It's quarter after three might look something like this: ⁠It's that late already?.

To say when something is happening, you have to use the preposition at plus the time. Some more examples of this are: ⁠The game starts at 8:00, ⁠School starts at quarter after eight, and ⁠I'm going to my friend's house at 5:00. Somebody might answer a sentence like this with either a question or a reaction. For example, ⁠Ok, then we still have enough time to go for a walk.

That's right! In English the time is able to fly. This sentence doesn't actually mean that the time is flying through the sky like an airplane though. It's an English idiom that means the time is going very quickly. Maybe you're having fun with some friends at a party, or reading a really good book? It's in moments like these when we seem to forget about the time that it's able to fly by us. In response to this idiom, somebody might agree or disagree with you. For example like this: ⁠Yeah, it's flying too quickly!.