Unit 16: What's the weather like?
Using 'may', 'might' and 'could'
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- 1 Nice to meet you!
- 2 What to wear
- 3 Like this, like that
- 4 The daily grind
- 5 Christmas every day
- 6 Great achievers
- 7 The Titanic
- 8 Travel
- 9 The big wedding
- 10 Sunny's job hunt
- 11 The bucket list
- 12 Moving and migration
- 13 Welcome to BBC Broadcasting House
- 14 New Year, New Project
- 15 From Handel to Hendrix
- 16 What's the weather like?
- 17 The Digital Revolution
- 18 A detective story
- 19 A place to live
- 20 The Cult of Celebrity
- 21 Welcome to your new job
- 22 Beyond the planets
- 23 Great expectations!
- 24 Eco-tourism
- 25 Moving house
- 26 It must be love
- 27 Job hunting success... and failure
- 28 Speeding into the future
- 29 Lost arts
- 30 Tales of survival
Session 2
Meet the weather supercomputer. Scientists hope it will make future weather predictions more accurate - but we will still need the words may, might and could. In this Session we'll show you how to use them.
Activity 2
It might rain tomorrow...
Predicting the weather
Now you have a better understanding of weather vocabulary, it's your turn to have a go at predicting the weather and deciding what will and what might happen later.
Do the activity
To do
You're going to read some sentences from weather forecasts. But what do they mean? See if you can choose the correct meaning for each one. Look at the vocabulary and grammar boxes if you need help. Good luck!
Weather talk
6 Questions
Read the weather forecasts and choose the sentence that best describes their meaning
Help
Activity
Read the weather forecasts and choose the sentence that best describes their meaning
Hint
We use words like 'may', 'might', 'could' and 'probably' for possible situations. Words and phrases like 'will' and 'going to' are used for definite future situations.Question 1 of 6
Help
Activity
Read the weather forecasts and choose the sentence that best describes their meaning
Hint
We use words like 'may', 'might', 'could' and 'probably' for possible situations. Words and phrases like 'will' and 'going to' are used for definite future situations.Question 2 of 6
Help
Activity
Read the weather forecasts and choose the sentence that best describes their meaning
Hint
We use words like 'may', 'might', 'could' and 'probably' for possible situations. Words and phrases like 'will' and 'going to' are used for definite future situations.Question 3 of 6
Help
Activity
Read the weather forecasts and choose the sentence that best describes their meaning
Hint
We use words like 'may', 'might', 'could' and 'probably' for possible situations. Words and phrases like 'will' and 'going to' are used for definite future situations.Question 4 of 6
Help
Activity
Read the weather forecasts and choose the sentence that best describes their meaning
Hint
We use words like 'may', 'might', 'could' and 'probably' for possible situations. Words and phrases like 'will' and 'going to' are used for definite future situations.Question 5 of 6
Help
Activity
Read the weather forecasts and choose the sentence that best describes their meaning
Hint
We use words like 'may', 'might', 'could' and 'probably' for possible situations. Words and phrases like 'will' and 'going to' are used for definite future situations.Question 6 of 6
Excellent! Great job! Bad luck! You scored:
Next
How are you getting on? The words may, might and could aren't just used to talk about the weather - you can use them in lots of other situations too, as Neil and Sophie find out in 6 Minute Grammar - which is on the next page.
Session Grammar
We use might / may / could + verb: for present & future possiblitites; for guesses about the present; when we aren’t sure if something will happen in the future.
- I might go to the exhibition this afternoon. (future)
- He’s Eastern Europe. He may be in Ukraine. (present)
- We could have some problems next year. (future)
We use might not / mightn’t and may not to talk about negative possibility. We cannot use could not / couldn’t for possibility in the same way as might not and may not.
- We might not move into the new offices next year.
- Our client may not agree with us.