Student Stumper 56: “It’s going to be rain” or “It’s going to rain”?

QUESTION: I said, “It’s going to be rain.” Someone told me I should say, “It’s going to rain.” Why?

ANSWER: This question was deceptively hard for me to answer. I broke it down point by point for my student.

We use the structure “be going to” in front of a base verb to refer to the future. It’s similar to “will.”
It’s going to rain.
It will rain.
Both verbs allow us to make predictions. Some encourage use of “be going to” when our predictions are based on evidence, but either verb allows us to refer to the future.

Let’s not forget that a number of weather words can function as both verbs and nouns.
It’s going to rain heavily. (verb)
vs. There’s going to be heavy rain. We’re going to have heavy rain. (noun)

It’s going to snow a lot. (verb)
vs. There’s going to be a lot of snow. We’re going to have a lot of snow. (noun)

Note above how BE can function as the main verb: [is going to] + BE.
In this case, we might view BE as a linking verb, so a noun or adjective follows:
There’s going to be rain. (noun)
It’s going to be rainy. (adjective)
It’s going to be a rainy day. (noun phrase)

If that much is clear, the next step is to understand when to use “there is” and when to use the dummy subject “it.”

I explained to my student that we use the dummy subject “it” for weather and general observations:
It’s cold outside.
It’s really windy.
It’s a beautiful day.
Weather predictions work the same way. We use “it” with “be going to”:
It’s going to rain all day. They said so on TV.

We use “there is/are” structures to talk about what already exists, what happened, or what will happen. The anticipatory subject “there” signals that the true subject will follow, so only a noun or noun phrase will follow.
There was a downpour. (subject = a downpour)
There is a big storm on its way. (subject = a big storm)
There will be strong winds and heavy rain. (subject = strong winds and heavy rain)
There’s going to be some flooding. (subject = some flooding)

Invite your students to try two short tasks to test their accuracy with the grammar. See the handout below or click here to download.



Featured image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay

Related posts:
3 Common Mistakes with the Pronoun IT: Helping students master dummy subjects and cleft sentences (2017)
Subject-Verb Agreement: There’s still more to talk about! (2017)
Student Stumper 40: Does the verb BE always link a subject to a complement? (2013)

Dummy-subjects_handoutDownload