The Weather - Podcast 61
The Weather - Podcast 61
In this week's Premier Skills English podcast, Rich and Jack talk about pre-season tours and what happens when the weather stops you from doing what you want to do. The language focus is on phrases that we use to talk about the weather and we focus on the /p/ and /b/ sounds in our pronunciation section. Our Club of the Week is Manchester City and we have news about our Fantasy Football team. We also have news of a new mini-course for you to join.
How much did you understand?
Vocabulary - The Weather
In the podcast, Rich and Jack used lots of words to describe the weather and how the weather can affect football matches. You can see two examples here:
There have been lots of storms and heavy rain.
The derby match between City and Utd has been called off.
Manchester Utd fans in China were very disappointed that the Manchester derby had to be called off.
There were a few more tricky words in the podcast. Can you remember all of them? Try the activity below to see how much you know, then try to find the words in the podcast and listen to how we use the words in context. This can really help with understanding.
Language - The Weather
Talking about the weather is a very common topic in the UK, we often talk about the weather when we are talking to people we don't know very well or when we are passing neighbours in the street. This type of polite conversation is called 'small talk'. Small talk covers topics such as the weather, the time, holidays and very often football! You can find out more in our lesson about small talk in our English Game series. Here we're going to concentrate on one of these topics; the weather. It can be very useful to know some phrases to start a conversation about the weather. Have a look at these phrases below:
It's a lovely day, isn't it?
We're having horrible weather at the moment, aren't we?
This heat is awful. You can't do anything, can you?
Do you think this rain will ever stop?
The first question is the most polite. The adjective can be changed to 'awful' or 'horrible' if the weather is not very good. The weather is often not very good in the UK and people love to complain about it! We often use tag questions like in the examples above - this allows us to say a sentence and allow the listener to agree with us. We often complain if the weather is too cold or if it rains too much, but when we do have hot and sunny weather (it does happen sometimes!) we often complain about that, too!
Vocabulary - The Weather
Let's start by looking at some basic words, then we will look at some more difficult phrases in the activity below. Can you describe the weather easily? Have a look at the exercise below, then look out of the window. What's the weather like today?
The weather can often cause problems in football. Look at this Premier League match between Sunderland and Manchester City!
Hot and cold weather
People often say it's hot outside or it's cold outside when they talk about the weather but there are many other phrases to tell people that it is hot or cold. In the activity below, look at these more difficult words and phrases and decide if it means hot or cold.
Pronunciation - Similar Sounds
In this week's podcast, we looked at the pronunciation of two consonant sounds. The sounds were /b/ and /p/. These sounds are very similar. The only difference is that the /p/ sound is unvoiced and the /b/ sound is voiced. This means that only air passes through your mouth to make the /p/ sound but for the /b/ sound you use your vocal chords. The sounds /b/ and /p/ can be difficult for some learners. In the podcast, Jack and Rich showed you how to use a piece of paper to know if you're saying the sounds correctly. Have a look at the examples in the table and try saying the words with a piece of paper in front of your mouth!
|
/p/ |
/b/ |
| football pitch | football |
| player | substitutes bench |
| a professional foul | a booking |
Finally, try saying this difficult sentence with some /b/ sounds and /p/ sounds. Remember, the paper should move on /p/ and remain still on /b/.
The players ran onto the football pitch and the referee blew his whistle.
Tottenham are travelling a total of 36,158 kilometres on their pre-season tours; including a trip to Australia to play Juventus.
Transcript
Welcome
Rich: Hello my name’s Rich and welcome to this week’s Premier Skills English podcast.
Jack: Hi everyone. I’m Jack and every week we talk about football and help you with your English.
Rich: This week we’re going to talk about pre-season tours and the language focus is going to be on language we use to talk about the weather.
Jack. We’ll also have our pronunciation, fantasy football and football phrase sections for y ou later. And we have our second pre-season mini-course for you to complete.
Rich: Well done to Alex from Ukraine who was the first to complete our first pre-season course last week. Well done to the rest of you who completed it, too. We hope that you found it useful.
Jack: If you haven’t started the course yet, don’t worry. Just go to the fans section at the top of the page and click on courses. You will find last week’s course and all the courses that are available for you on Premier Skills English.
Rich: That’s right - we’re going to try to have a new course for you every week. And, we’ll use this podcast to help you with some parts of the course - so maybe it’s a good idea to start the course now. Can you see the button on the side of the page that says ‘join course’ - click it now, then continue listening!
Jack: We will look at some of the different parts of the course in this podcast. Don’t forget to click on the mark as complete button when you finish each section.
Rich: But remember to come back to the podcast after you complete each section because this is the first section in this week’s course!
Jack: Right, that all sounds good. Let’s get on with the show!
Social
Jack: What’s been happening on the website this week, Rich?
Rich: As I said earlier, we’ve got out first pre-season course up and running. We’ve also got a new article on strikers with some more advanced football language.
Jack: Like what?
Rich: One example in the article is the word goalhanger which is quite difficult. I bet you were a goal hanger at school!
Jack Never!
Rich: We all did it sometimes. It’s when a player stays very close to the other team’s goal to try to score easy goals.
Jack: Ha! Yes, I remember and at school in the playground we never played offside. Sometimes matches would finish 24-25 and we only played for 30 minutes!
Rich: So, if you want to look for some more difficult vocabulary have a look at our strikers article and quiz on the homepage.
Jack: We also had some great comments from new members last week. Pre-season course 1 involved looking at the Manchester Utd page and we had lots of opinions about the Red Devils.
Rich: Bokan Mohamad from Iraq is excited about Ibrahimovic at Manchester Utd and Mostafa Ellafy from Egypt thinks that United will be stronger this season. But Davilillons, an Arsenal fan from Spain, thinks they still need to sign some more players.
Latest News / Language Focus
Jack: What’s been happening in the Premier League this week, Rich?
Rich: There have been more new signings this week. The biggest is probably Georginio Wijnaldum who Liverpool have signed from Newcastle for about £25 million or maybe Alvaro Negredo, the ex-Man City striker, who Middlesbrough have signed from Valencia in Spain.
Jack: Very exciting. It’s good to see a new team getting a top striker like Negredo.
Rich: Yes, maybe he would be a good buy for the Premier Skills Fantasy Football team, but more about that later. What else has been happening?
Jack: Premier League clubs are preparing for the new season, which involves lots of training and pre-season friendly matches and lots of clubs are on pre-season tours.
Rich: That’s right! I saw last week that Premier League clubs will travel 172 thousand miles on pre-season tours that’s 277 thousand kilometres!
Jack: That’s a lot of miles or kilometres!
Rich: Premier League clubs are visiting 14 countries during pre-season. Tottenham will fly the furthest when they go to Australia, but the USA is the most popular country to visit. 8 Premier League teams have visited or will visit the US during pre-season.
Jack: I’ve seen that the two Manchester clubs, City and Utd, are in China. But it’s not all going to plan.
Rich: No, it isn’t. There has been horrible weather in China. There have been lots of storms and heavy rain.
Jack: It sounds just like Manchester!
Rich: Yes, I know. Manchester is well-known for a city where it rains a lot but I think the rain in Beijing this week has been a lot heavier.
Jack: Yes, and the derby match between city and utd, I won’t call it a friendly match because it’s difficult for a derby to be a friendly, has been called off.
Rich: Called off?
Jack: Yes, called off is a phrasal verb that means to be cancelled. The match between Manchester City and Manchester Utd has been called off, it’s been cancelled because of the weather.
Rich: This means the match won’t be played again because it was only a friendly. In the Premier League, when a match is called off because of bad weather we say the match is postponed.
Jack: Postponed means cancelled but will happen again in the future on a different day.
Rich: And this is different from delayed. A match can be delayed by a few minutes because of bad weather or because the players haven’t arrived or something. But a match is delayed by a few minutes or maybe hours; when a match is postponed it’s played on a different day.
Jack: And when a match is cancelled it is permanent like the Manchester Derby in Beijing. It’s a pity because it would have been the first ever derby to be played abroad - outside of the UK.
Rich: The weather can often cause problems for people and in our activities this week we’re looking at vocabulary to describe the weather and asking you if the weather has ever stopped you doing something you wanted to do.
Club of the Week
Jack: This week’s club of the week is Manchester City. What’s new at City this season?
Rich: Well, as you probably know, the biggest change at City this season is the manager.
Jack: Of course, this season City’s manager will be Pep Guardiola - definitely one of the best managers a team can have.
Rich: Yes, he’s had lots of success at Bayern Munich in the last three seasons but he’s most famous for the Barcelona team that won the Champions League twice and the Spanish League three times.
Jack: And, has he brought in any new players, yet?
Rich: He’s bought the Spanish winger, Nolito but the biggest buy so far is Ilkay Gundogan from Borussia Dortmund. He’s a German international midfielder and I think he will be a big player for City this season.
Jack: We had an interesting comment from Jane Lost from Russia on the Manchester City page. She says that many people say that City have no history as a big club. She then says City’s history is being written now. What do you think? Is the history of a football club important? Rich - You’ve predicted that City will win win the League this season!
Rich: I know. I’m feeling nervous about my prediction.
Jack: Go to the Manchester City page as part of this week’s pre-season course and tell us if you agree with Jane and if you agree with Rich’s prediction.
Pronunciation
Rich: Each week we’re going to help you with your pronunciation. Sometimes we will look at individual sounds, sometimes at words and phrases and sometimes linking sentences together.
Jack: This week, we want to help you with two sounds that are sometimes difficult. The sounds are /p/ and /b/. Some learners find it difficult to notice the difference and pronounce the sounds the same.
Rich: But they are different and there is one easy way to check.
Jack: What’s that, Rich?
Rich: Well, when you say the sound /p/ like football pitch some air comes out of your mouth. But when you say /b/ like football, or ball no air comes out of your mouth.
Jack: OK, but how do you know if air is coming out or not.
Rich: This is the clever part. Put a piece of paper in front of your mouth and say football pitch. If you are saying it correctly the paper will move when you say the /p/ sound. Then say football, football, football. The paper shouldn’t move.
Jack: Nice. I think it’s a good idea for practising these sounds but maybe not in public!!
Football Phrase
Rich: Last week’s football phrase was transfer window. There are two transfer windows. One in January and one in the summer. These are the periods of the year when clubs can buy and sell players.
Jack: Well done to Alex from Ukraine, Kwesimanifest from Ghana, Aragorn1986 from Montenegro, AssemJuve from Palestine, Rema from Serbia, Safwan20000 from Saudi Arabia, Haydi from Tunisia and Bokan Mohamad from Iraq. All of you go the correct answer!
Rich: Have you got a new phrase for us this week?
Jack: Yes, this week’s football phrase is **** *******. This is a phrase that connects football and something we’ve been speaking about in this week’s podcast and that you can read more about in the lesson - the weather. The phrase is **** *******. The phrase describes a team or a player who hasn’t scored for a long time. You say a player or a team is suffering from a **** *******. The second word is a weather word that is used to describe the weather when it hasn’t rained for a long time.
Rich: Definitely, not a problem we have in the UK most of the time. It’s always raining here.
Fantasy Football
Jack: We’ve started to build our Fantasy Football team on Premier Skills English. We’ve already chosen our strikers.
Rich: As part of this week’s course - Pre-season course 2 go to the discussion on midfielders and help us choose five midfielders for the Premier Skills Fantasy Football squad!
Jack: Remember you can enter your own team in our Premier Skills League on the Premier League website, too!
Rich: Fantastic! Right, well, that’s all we have time for today!
Jack: Don’t forget to write your answers to our questions and the football phrase in the comments below. And remember to join this week’s Premier Skills English course by clicking on Pre-Season Course 2 on the side of this page.
Rich: Bye for now and enjoy your football!
Quiz
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What do you think?
In this week’s podcast, we spoke about the weather and how it can affect football matches.
Are football matches often postponed in your country? Why?
What's the weather like in your country? What weather do you like best?
Has the weather ever stopped you doing something that you wanted to do?
Remember, check out our Fantasy Football Page to find out how you can play Fantasy Football with us on Premier Skills English.
Write all your answers and comments plus the answer to this week's football phrase in the comments section below.
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Komentar
27/07/2016
points
**** ******* is this week's phrase.
27/07/2016 19:18
Liverpool
6562
**** ******* is this week's phrase.
28/07/2016
points
Well done Alex! I thought it was a bit tricky this week but you got it straight away!
28/07/2016 12:24
Liverpool
594
Well done Alex! I thought it was a bit tricky this week but you got it straight away!