This mini episode teaches you the very useful “about to” construction.
Episode 244 of the Everybody ESL podcast is a mini episode that teaches you the very useful “about to” construction. What does it mean? And how do you use it? Send your questions about English and your suggestions for future episodes to EverybodyESL@gmail.com! (And let me know if you’d like to record the introduction to a future episode.)
Intro
“Hello! This is Hyeonjeong, from Seoul. And you are listening to Everybody ESL.”
Welcome to episode 244 of Everybody ESL, the podcast for everybody who wants to improve their English, practice their English, or just learn more English. My name is Ben, and I have a mini episode for you today, where I am going to teach you about one English topic. You can subscribe to the Everybody ESL podcast at Apple podcasts, on the Stitcher app, and wherever you find your podcasts. If you like Everybody ESL, leave it a good review so other people can find out about it too. And if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for me, please send an email to everybodyESL@gmail.com. Okay! Let’s get on with this mini episode.
The episode
In this episode, I am going to teach you about a very common and very useful construction. I’m going to teach you the “about to” construction. “About to.” What does this mean, and how do you use this construction?
If you are “about to” do something. that means you will do it very soon. It could mean that you are planning to do it. It could mean that you are preparing to do it. It means that it will happen soon.
Let me give you some examples of situations where somebody might say, “About to” do something.
Let’s say you are thinking about your friend, and then you receive a text message from this friend. You might send this message back to your friend: “I was about to text you.” I was about to text you.
And that means I was going to text you soon. Or I was planning to text you. You are saying, “I was preparing to text you. I was going to text you soon.”
Here’s another very common kind of example:
Imagine that somebody looks up at the sky and says, “I think it’s about to rain.” I think it’s about to rain.
What does this mean? What does it mean to say, “About to rain”? This sentence means, I think it will rain soon. I think it will start to rain soon. I think it’s going to rain soon.
In both of those examples—“about to text” and “about to rain”—this construction means that something will happen soon. Often we use it to mean that something will happen very soon.
And that is the “about to” construction. This is a very common and very useful construction that I think you should know.
Outro
And that is the end of episode 244 of Everybody ESL. Remember: if you have any questions about English, or if you have comments or suggestions about the podcast, or if you would like to record an introduction that I can use at the beginning of future episodes—the same way Hyeonjeong recorded the introduction you heard at the beginning of this episode—send an email to everybodyESL@gmail.com. I’ll be back soon with another episode, and until then, keep going, keep practicing, and keep learning. Goodbye! I’ll see you soon.