Come rain or shine, this post is here to help you break the ice with English speakers. And what’s better than a good old small talk about the weather? This topic can be considered the most common ways to start a conversation or to make someone feel more at ease in a new social context.
Small talk is believed to be a polite conversation about unimportant matters and, as already said, it is frequently initiated by comments about the weather. This topic is, in fact,
universal; it is not related to a particular context which the other person may not know about and it is also hardly controversial. People can use several conversation starters as: “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”, “How about this weather?” or “It’s a bit cold for this time of the year, isn’t it?”. Question tags are frequently used because one can easily reply and then decide to continue either with another topic or with other comments or to go on with the conversation about the weather. In the second case, here is a list of vocabulary you can use to talk about the weather, either to appreciate it, complain about it or wonder how it is going to be in the future days:
Image of the sun:
What a beautiful sunny day it is today!
It’s looking nice outside today, not a cloud in the sky!
We couldn’t ask for a nicer day, could we?
The weather is great, isn’t it?
It’s boiling hot today!
We are having a heatwave!
It’s scorching.
Image of rain and clouds:
It’s raining pretty hard out there!
It’s so gloomy outside.
It’s really cloudy outside.
I better take an umbrella.
Awful weather, isn’t it?
Image of snow:
It’s snowing outside!
I love snow days!
It’s freezing.
Talking about the future:
What’s the weather forecast?
It’s really cloudy out, I wonder if it will rain today.
A big storm is expected next week.
It looks like it’s going to snow.
Another interesting feature about the weather vocabulary is that it is one of the most used in idiomatic expressions. For example, in this first sentence of the first paragraph, there are two of them: “Come rain or shine” and “Break the ice”.
The first one means someone is going to be there for you no matter what, in every situation.
The second one instead means to do or say something to get the conversation going when strangers meet or to make feel someone more comfortable in a new social setting. I guess after this article it will be a breeze for you to talk about the weather in English.
P.S. be a breeze means very easy to do
Small talk is believed to be a polite conversation about unimportant matters and, as already said, it is frequently initiated by comments about the weather. This topic is, in fact,
universal; it is not related to a particular context which the other person may not know about and it is also hardly controversial. People can use several conversation starters as: “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”, “How about this weather?” or “It’s a bit cold for this time of the year, isn’t it?”. Question tags are frequently used because one can easily reply and then decide to continue either with another topic or with other comments or to go on with the conversation about the weather. In the second case, here is a list of vocabulary you can use to talk about the weather, either to appreciate it, complain about it or wonder how it is going to be in the future days:
Image of the sun:
What a beautiful sunny day it is today!
It’s looking nice outside today, not a cloud in the sky!
We couldn’t ask for a nicer day, could we?
The weather is great, isn’t it?
It’s boiling hot today!
We are having a heatwave!
It’s scorching.
It’s raining pretty hard out there!
It’s so gloomy outside.
It’s really cloudy outside.
I better take an umbrella.
Awful weather, isn’t it?
Image of snow:
It’s snowing outside!
I love snow days!
It’s freezing.
Talking about the future:
What’s the weather forecast?
It’s really cloudy out, I wonder if it will rain today.
A big storm is expected next week.
It looks like it’s going to snow.
Another interesting feature about the weather vocabulary is that it is one of the most used in idiomatic expressions. For example, in this first sentence of the first paragraph, there are two of them: “Come rain or shine” and “Break the ice”.
The first one means someone is going to be there for you no matter what, in every situation.
The second one instead means to do or say something to get the conversation going when strangers meet or to make feel someone more comfortable in a new social setting. I guess after this article it will be a breeze for you to talk about the weather in English.
P.S. be a breeze means very easy to do
There are many other smalltalk themes. Can you teach some other here for ESL-learners?
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