Podcast 23

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 family, the language focus is expressions that use the word ‘run’ and later I’ll make another Premier League prediction.

Jack: And you have another chance to win a Samsung Galaxy tablet in our ‘What’s my Team?’ competition.

Rich: What was the answer to last week’s riddle Jack?

Jack: Ah, yes. Last week it was Tom ... his favourite Premier League team is Manchester Utd.

Rich: We had lots of correct entries so congratulations to everybody who got it right. I think most people who heard Old Trafford and Ryan Giggs would have chosen Man Utd.

Jack: Yes, Giggs never played for any other club and has been at Old Trafford for nearly 30 years as a player and now as Louis van Gaal’s assistant.

Rich: We have selected a winner at random from the correct answers...

Jack: and the fifth winner of the What’s my team? competition is Volodymyr from Ukraine. Congratulations Volodymyr , we’ve already sent you an email and your prize will soon be on its way.

Rich: Well done Volodymyr ! Later on in the podcast, you can listen to this week’s What’s my team riddle.

Rich: Last week, we asked you if there was a river that flows through your town or city.

Jack: And you made a prediction about the Manchester derby. How did you do this time?

Rich: I was close - I got one of the team’s scores right?

Jack: That’s not really close - you predicted a Man United win and the derby was a draw in the end.

Rich: Well, not many people predicted a draw!

Jack: Elghoul from Algeria and Volodomyr, this week’s competition winner both predicted a 2-2 draw. As well as that, Rafael24 from Ecuador, ManH267 from Vietnam, Aragorn 1986 from Montenegro, Dana from Albania, Merko from Serbia, GalaUA from Ukraine all predicted draws and Nokosonris from Ukraine managed to predict the exact result. Well done Nikosonris - Let’s see if you can do as well this week.

Rich: I’m going to do better this week. I learnt quite a few new rivers thanks to comments comments. Rafael24 from Ecuador said the Chibunga River flows through his town in Ecuador, Aragorn96 from Montenegro said the Moraca flows through his town and GalaUA from Ukraine says the Dnieper flows through Kiev - his home town.

Jack: Last week, we were looking at prepositions of movement so it was great to see you all using the preposition ‘through’ in these sentences.

Rich: Later, we’re looking at some expressions with the word ‘run’ so here let’s start the ball rolling and use one expression in some of your examples.

Jack: Instead of saying a river flows through my town you can also say a river runs through my town.

Rich: So, GunnerUZ from Uzbekistan could say the River Anhor runs through his town, and VerdeMead96 from Poland could say the Vistula River runs through her town and Rema from Serbia could say that the Rivers Sava and Danube run through his town.

Rich: There are some famous Rivers in the UK too! The River Thames is probably the most famous, which flows through the middle of London.

Jack: And of course the River Mersey,which runs through Liverpool.

Rich: Sorry if we didn’t have time to mention your comment, but please continue to write your comments and questions in our comments section and we will get back to you.

Jack: Last weekend there was a big win for Arsenal and the Gunners went top of the league for a few hours before Man City went back above them after a goalless draw in the Manchester Derby.

Rich: Yes, defences were definitely on top for a change in that one.

Jack: But, we’re going to talk about the Aston Villa - Swansea City match, which was interesting for a different reason. How many Premier League brothers do you know Rich?

Rich: The Neville brothers, Gary and Phil, played for nearly 10 years together in Man Utd’s defence.

Jack: And Yaya and Kolo Toure played together at Man City and also became the first brothers to score in the same match. But no brothers had scored for different teams until last weekend.

Rich: For the first time in Premier League history, two brothers scored for opposite teams.

Jack: The Ayew brothers have only been playing in the Premier League a couple of months. Jordan is at Villa and Andre is at Swansea.

Rich: And football certainly runs in the family - do you know who their dad is?

Jack: Yes, it’s Abedi Pele, who many football experts think is the greatest African Footballer ever!

Rich: And the Villa-Swansea match was probably one of the few times they have been on different teams because they played together at Marseille in France and, of course, play together for their national team - Ghana!

Jack: And who finished on top?

Rich: It was looking good for Jordan Ayew, the younger brother, when he scored the first goal and it looked like Villa might end their bad run - they hadn’t won since the opening day of the season.

Jack: But Swansea equalised just 6 minutes later and then with time running out, Andre Ayew, the older brother, scored the winning goal!

Rich: Do you think there might be some family arguments?

Jack: No, I don’t think so. After the match Jordan Ayew said there was no problem because they are family.

Rich: That’s good news. I wonder who their dad was supporting!

Jack: We used a few expressions with the word ‘run’ there. The first one was to run in the family.

Rich: If something runs in the family it means that it is something that everybody in the family has like a characteristic or an ability.

Jack: So football ability runs in the Ayew family because Jordan and Andre are Premier League footballers and of course their dad was quite good too!

Rich: I said that Villa are on a bad run. A run means a set of results, so Villa have now lost 6 consecutive matches and are on a very bad run.

Jack: We also said to run out of time. To run out of something means to have nothing left so Villa ran out of time before they could score another goal.

Rich: We’ve put some exercises below to practise these expressions with ‘run’, let us know if these words were new for you.

Jack: Right, I think it’s time for this week’s competition: ‘What’s my Team?’

Rich: Here is what you have to do. Listen to a Premier League fan, who will talk about their favourite team and then write the name of the team  in the comments section on the Premier Skills English website.

Jack: And for each of the 20 podcast competitions the lucky winner will receive a fantastic Samsung Galaxy Tablet.

Rich: Right, so this week, our Premier League fan is Kingsley. Listen to Kingsley’’s riddle and try to work out what’s his team?

Kingsley: We’re back in the Premier League this season and hoping to stay here this time. We’ve signed a lot of new players and they’re looking good. We play in very distinctive yellow and black shirts and our nickname is the hornets. Did you know that our club’s president used to be the singer - Elton John, he’s probably our most famous fan!

Jack: Elton John? He sang about The Lion King didn’t he? I have to say, it’s not really my cup of tea! Now, it’s time for your prediction Rich. Let’s see if you can improve on your recent predictions!

Rich: The big match this weekend is Chelsea against Liverpool. Both teams are on a bad run at the moment with Chelsea losing to West Ham last week and in the bottom half of the table and Liverpool drawing too many matches. Liverpool will be hoping to get 90 minutes out of Christian Benteke and Daniel Sturridge in attack for the first time this season. Chelsea really need a win but their top players are not performing at the moment. I think it’ll finish as a draw and neither team will be very happy with the result. Final score: Chelsea 1-1 Liverpool.

Jack: If you’ve got a prediction for these matches let us know in the comments section below.

Rich: But you’ll have to tell us early. Chelsea-Liverpool is the early match on Saturday!

Jack: That’s it for today - we’ve run out of time! Thanks for listening. And don’t forget to write your answers to the competition, your Premier League predictions, and any questions you have about the website or football English in the comments below.

Rich: Don’t forget if you sign in, you can score points to see if you can get your club, your country and your name to the top of our leaderboard.

Jack:  Bye for now and enjoy your football.