Unit 19　Modern agriculture

6.it was on tuesday that mrs.smith came.
7.it's three miles from here to the nearest garage.
8.a tall man stood up and shook hands.it was captain lawrie.
9.i hear you bought a new bike.can you show it to me?
10.it was five o'clock when we got back home yesterday.
11.it was dirty and wet below the ship where the slaves were kept.
12.it was on this coast that lots of his people disappeared.
13.it was most likely that one third of them had lost their lives.
(after a few minutes.)
t:are you ready?
ss:yes.
t:who will give us the answers?one student,one sentence.volunteers?
sa:“it” is used as a formal subject in the first sentence.its real subject is the infinitive“to remember all their names.”
sb：2.“it”refers to present situation.
sc:3.“it”refers to “weather”.
sd:4.“it”is used as a formal object.
se:5.“it” is used as a formal subject.
sf:6.this sentence is an emphatic structure,emphasizing the adverbial of time.
sg:7.“it” is used here as an impersonal pronoun,referring to distance.
sh:8.“it”here is used to point out definitely a person.
si:9.“it”here is applied to a new bike.
sj:10.“it”refers to time.
sk:11.“it”is used as the subject,expressing state of things in general.
sl:12.this sentence is also an emphatic construction,emphasizing adverbial of place “on this coast”.
sm:13.the word “it”here is used as a formal subject.
t:quite right.as we all know,the word “it”can be used as a personal pronoun.in this case,“it”is not generally applied to a person,but to a thing or an animal just mentioned,such as“sentence 9”.secondly,“it” is used as a subject in expressions of time,weather,distance,etc,such as,in sentence 2,3,7,10,11.thirdly,“it”can be used as a formal subject or object.(the real subject is an infinitive or gerundial phrase or a clause.)such as,in sentences 1,4,5,13.fourthly,in sentence 8,“it”points to a person and is called the demonstrative it.it can also be used in the emphatic structure,such as in sentence 6,12.
step ⅱ.practice
t:from the exercise we've done just now,we can see that you are all familiar with the common use of“it”.next,let's see some important sentence patterns.now,i'll give you an exercise on the screen.(show the screen.)pair work or group work.some of the patterns are perhaps not familiar to you.if so,look at the answers some minutes later and remember them.
complete the sentences,paying attention to the structures of them and the use of“it”.
1.__________ (據報道)that dozens of children died in the accident.
2.__________(真遺憾)that he can't swim at his age.