🕐 Telling the Time
WHAT TIME IS IT?
Move the hands, listen, choose and match. Learn to say the time in British English — o'clock, quarter past, half past and quarter to.
Move the hands, listen, choose and match. Learn to say the time in British English — o'clock, quarter past, half past and quarter to.
In British English we cut the clock in half. The right side is PAST, the left side is TO.
The minute hand is on the right. Say the minutes, then past, then this hour.
3:20 → It's twenty past three.
The minute hand is on the left. Say how many minutes are left, then to, then the next hour.
3:40 → It's twenty to four.
15 minutes = a quarter of an hour. 30 minutes = half an hour. After half past, we look forward to the next hour: 8:50 is ten to nine, not "ten to eight". Every small tick is 1 minute, so we can say any time exactly: 7:01 is one minute past seven and 7:59 is one minute to eight.