Listen and read along

Too many acronyms, I know 😅 But do not panic! You will differentiate them as soon as you get through this

explanation. As you have watched in the video, there are different times because when the sun is high in the sky in one

part of the world, it is night time in a different place so, for midday to be close to the middle of the day, the world has to

be divided into different time zones.

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The terms GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) and UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) are often interchangeable or confused

since both share  the same current time. However, GMT is a time zone, whereas UTC is a 24-hour time standard  

commonly  used across the world.

Nowadays, GMT is only the name of a standard time zone which is used by a few countries in Africa and Western

Europe, including the UK during winter and Iceland all year long. 

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During the period known as Daylight Saving Time (DST), which results of setting the clocks forward one hour from

standard time during the summer months, and back again in the fall, in order to make better use of natural daylight,

the UK is not on GMT but on British Summer Time (BST). 

The UK countries use DST during part of the year, but Ireland uses a different name. Here,the DST time zone is called

 Irish Standard Time (IST), sometimes also referred to as “Irish Summer Time”. Both BST and IST are one hour ahead

of GMT.

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Another acronym that you may find is CEST (Central European Summer Time) and it is always 2 hours ahead of GMT,

that is to say GMT+2. It  is a Daylight Saving Time zone and, as the name says, it is used in most European countries.

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At this point, it seems pertinent to make an aside to discuss: what are the pros and cons of changing time like this?

Here you have some views. Expand the list with ideas of your own and share them with the classroom.

After this brainstorming, let's head towards the time zones issue.

Time zones correspond to those regions of the world that have the same time on their clocks. Everyone in the same

time zone has the same time. As explained in the preceding video,  there are 24 time zones in the world, one for  each

hour on the clock. 

People in a different time zone from where you are have a different time on their clocks. This might mean a couple

hours behind you, a couple hours ahead of you, or even a different day. It depends on what time zone they are in.

For example, when in Spain it is 11am, in New York it is still 5 am and in Japan it is already 6 pm. This is easily

understood by looking at the time zones map, more precisely at the +/- signs and the number displayed at the top

and at the bottom of each division. If you add GMT before +/- and the number you get the time zone of that country.

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Click here to magnify the map above and do some practice: World time zones map