What's the time?

This is an activity designed to help beginners in English learn how to tell the time. It includes the key topics they should study, such as:

• Numbers (1–60)
• Hours and minutes
• Asking and answering “What time is it?”
• Using “o’clock,” “half past,” “quarter past/to”
• Reading digital and analog clocks
• Morning, afternoon, evening, night

O’clock

There are two common ways of telling the time.

1. Say the hour first and then the minutes. (Hour + Minutes)

• 6:25 - It’s six twenty-five
• 8:05 - It’s eight O-five (the O is said like the letter O)
• 9:11 - It’s nine eleven
• 2:34 - It’s two thirty-four

2. Say the minutes first and then the hour. (Minutes + PAST / TO + Hour) For minutes 1-30 we use PAST after the minutes. For minutes 31-59 we use TO after the minutes.

• 2:35 - It’s twenty-five to three
• 11:20 - It’s twenty past eleven
• 4:18 - It’s eighteen past four
• 8:51 - It’s nine to nine
• 2:59 - It’s one to three

Examples

When it is 15 minutes past the hour we normally say: (a) quarter past

• 7:15 - It’s (a) quarter past seven

When it is 15 minutes before the hour we normally say: a quarter to

• 12:45 - It’s (a) quarter to one

When it is 30 minutes past the hour we normally say: half past

• 3:30 - It’s half past three (but we can also say three-thirty)

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