PART 1: Rain or shine? - PART 2: Do you eat with a knife and fork? HI everybody, I'm Diego from Italy, this is my first notebook post here on Italki: I'll appreciate all your corrections, suggestions and notes. Thanks for your kind attention! The followings texts are two grammar exercises focusing on the using of articles (the, a(n) etc). PART 1 The weather affects our lives in all kinds of ways, from the clothes we wear to the way we feel. We love talking about it and always like to know what to expect in the future. There's nothing new about weather forecasting. More than 4000 years ago people started using stars to predict the weather. It wasn't until the 1800s that forecasting with simple instruments and map began. This made reports more accurate but, because they had to be sent by post, they usually arrived after the weather had changed! PART 2 Not all the peoples use cutlery at table. In many countries, among which India, people prefer to eat with their finger. In China, chopsticks have been used instead of knives and forks for over three thousand years. In almost all the western countries, on the contrary, the knife has been used to cut food and take it to the mouth since the time of Greeks and Romans. Besides knives, Romans also used two types of spoons: on e had a pointed handle and was used to crack eggs and open shellfish (oysters for example); the other one was used for cakes. The fork was introduced the 11th century, but was not widely used until the 17th century. The metals with which cutlery was made were brass, copper, silver and steel: all metals that required constant polishing; that until 1913, when stainless steel was invented in Great Britain.