May 2-6

Tuvalu – a disaster waiting to happen. Read the text and do the exercises
on pages 8 and 9.

Listen to a weather forecast and answer the questions to practise and improve your listening skills.

Hello and good morning! Well, we’re off to a good start in the south this week, as most of the rain from the weekend has disappeared – just a few patches of cloud and maybe some showers here on the east coast. They’ll all clear up by lunchtime, though. Over the next day or so, London and the area around Kent can expect a couple of isolated showers, but mostly dry through until Thursday.

It’s not such good news for the north-west this week, I’m afraid: wetter weather, and not a lot of sunshine. Some of today’s showers will be heavy – and even thundery in Manchester and across the Pennies. Leeds will escape the thunderstorms, with drizzle and light rain only throughout the rest of the day and tonight.

Elsewhere, it becomes dry today, but with some foggy patches towards Wales. In England, tomorrow morning will see a dry, bright start in most places, with high temperatures throughout the week. We might see one or two thunderstorms appearing as the week goes on, with temperatures everywhere at 29 to 30 degrees. 

By the weekend, unfortunately, the dry weather will make way for mostly cloudy skies and rain. The rain will move from Scotland, down towards the north and reach the south coast by Saturday afternoon. Temperatures, at least, will stay mostly warm at around 21 degrees for the weekend. It might feel like a nice change from the high twenties and early thirties we’ll see in the week. That’s all from me until tomorrow. Enjoy the mini-heatwave while you can!

Preparation

  1. a small area — a patch
  2. to disappear — to clear up
  3. on its own, without other similar things around it — isolated
  4. during all of a period of time — throughout
  5. in other places — elsewhere
  6. to move so that there is space for something to enter — to make way for
  7. very light rain — drizzle
  8. a period of weather that is much hotter than normal — a heatwave

Task 1

Listening B1: A weather forecast – 1

Put the words in the correct group.

Rainy weatherSunny weather
thunderstormsbright
wet weatherdry
showersa heatwave
drizzle

Task 2

Listening B1: A weather forecast – 2

Are the sentences true or false?

  1. It will start raining at lunchtime today in the east. — False.
  2. The weather in the north-west will be worse than in the south. — True.
  3. There will be thunder in Leeds tonight. — False.
  4. Most of England will be hot this week. — True.
  5. Wet weather will move from the north to the south at the weekend. — True.
  6. It will stay hot when the rain comes. — False.