Podcast 51 - Party Time!

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: Remember, this week’s podcast is also part of Week 2 of our new course: Leicester City: Champions of England. You can enroll on week two of the course on this page following the link at the side of the page or at the bottom if you’re on a mobile.

Jack: If you haven’t started the course yet, you can also go back and enroll on week one. We’ve also put a link to the content for week one on this page. The course lasts four weeks and when you get to the end there will be a nice certificate waiting for you.

Rich: And you will have improved your English skills and learned much more about Leicester City - the new Champions of England.

Jack: In this week’s Premier Skills English podcast  we’re talking about the end of the Premier League season, celebrations in Leicester and sightseeing. The language focus is on extreme adjectives and the passive voice.

Rich: We had a new football phrase for you to guess last week. It was quite a challenging one and we only had one correct answer.

Jack: Yes, well done to HassanRaja447 from Pakistan who correctly said that the football phrase was to lift the trophy.

Rich: Leicester City lifted the trophy at their home match against Everton and we’ll be talking much more about Leicester’s title celebrations a little later on.

Jack: Last week we also asked you to tell us some adjectives to describe Leicester’s title win. Kwesimanifest from Ghana said Leicester’s win was  incredible, impeccable and encouraging. These are great words and he also gave reasons for his answers. I liked his thoughts about why Leicester’s win was encouraging. He said the win gives hope to all underdogs, within sport, and in life more generally.

Rich: One of the words that Haydi from Tunisia used to describe Leicester’s success was ‘fairytale’ because Claudio Ranieri was not welcome at first but he finished as the winner. Haydi compared Leicester’s win to the fairytale ‘Cinderella’ and I think this is a good comparison.

Jack: You could call it a rags to riches story. This is an expression used about stories that involve people starting from very poor or humble origins to becoming very rich or successful. Rags are very old clothes that are often torn and dirty.

Rich: I’m not sure that Leicester players were ever in rags but I understand the idea.

Jack: AssemJuve from Palestine used wonderful, stunning and amazing. I really like these types of adjective. We sometimes call them extreme or non-gradable adjectives because we can’t grade them or change them with words like ‘very’.

Rich: Wonderful already means very good so we can’t say very wonderful. Another example is freezing. Freezing already means very cold so we can’t say very freezing.

Jack: There are some special words we can use, however, to make these words stronger. We can use words like ‘absolutely’, ‘completely’ or ‘totally’. So we can say ‘I’m absolutely freezing’  or ‘Leicester’s win was ‘totally stunning’ or ‘completely amazing’.

Rich: Let’s move on to the next part of this week’s show, which is going to be absolutely amazing!

Jack: What’s been happening in the Premier League this week, Rich?

Rich: It was the last week of the Premier League season.

Jack: Are you sad to see the end?

Rich: Yes, it’s been an absolutely sensational season with some utterly astounding results.

Jack: The biggest surprise was of course, Leicester and they finished their season at Chelsea.

Rich: Yes, it was an emotional afternoon for the Leicester manager Claudio Ranieri. Ranieri used to be the manager of Chelsea and, before the match, he was given a special trophy by Chelsea football club and, along with the Leicester players, he was given a guard of honour by the Chelsea players and the Chelsea fans gave the Foxes a standing ovation and sang Ranieri’s name.

Jack: OK, let’s talk about what a guard of honour and a standing ovation are.

Rich: A guard of honour is usually performed by the military when there is an important visitor. Soldiers stand in two rows with their arms in the air to welcome the visitor and the visitor walks under the arms.

Jack: And in football?

Rich: There are no soldiers! Traditionally, the new Champions are given a guard of honour by the next team they play.  The players of that team, instead of the soldiers, create the guard of honour. Chelsea didn’t have to do it because Everton had done it the week before, but they decided to do it to respect the new champions and their old manager.

Jack: Honour is a noun and it combines respect, honesty and being proud of something. And to do something in honour of somebody is to show great respect to somebody. So Chelsea made the guard of honour in honour of Leicester the new champions.

Rich: And the fans also gave Leicester a standing ovation. An ovation is when lots of fans or spectators, or an audience clap very loudly because they are happy and a group of players or other performers have done particularly well. . A standing ovation is when you do this standing up!

Jack: You don’t often see fans of the other team singing and cheering in a nice way about the other team and manager! It’s actually really nice to see. So, Leicester finished the season 10 points ahead of the rest.

Rich: Yes, and in the end it was Arsenal who finished second, Spurs third and Manchester City 4th, who all qualify for next season’s Champions League.

Jack: And you hope that Liverpool can join them, too?

Rich: Yes, if Liverpool beat Sevilla in the Europa League Final on Wednesday, the Premier League will have five teams in next season’s Champions League.

Jack: And who are we saying goodbye to?

Rich: We’ve known for a long time that Aston Villa were relegated but we know now that Norwich City and Newcastle Utd will join them in the Championship next season.

Jack: Rafa Benitez couldn’t stop Newcastle’s relegation but Sunderland managed to stay up again. It’s amazing, they manage to escape every season. I think they only play well in the spring!

Rich: Maybe they will do a Leicester next season?!

Jack: Which teams are going to replace them?

Rich: Burnley return to the Premier League after just one season away and Middlesborough also return to the Premier League after seven years. We will have to wait to see who joins them. There are four teams in the playoffs and one of them will also win promotion.

Jack: The City of Leicester are celebrating this week. Now the season has ended, the club and the local council organised a huge party for the city and a victory parade for the players. A parade is a public celebration with decorated vehicles that follows a specific route.

Rich: The Leicester players were on an open top bus, which is a bus with two floors and the upstairs part is without a roof. The bus went through the city of Leicester with thousands of fans cheering the team as it went past.  

Jack: Let’s speak about where the bus went and some places in Leicester. We’d like you to think about where a bus would go in a city in your country because this is one of the activities we would like you to do this week.

Rich: The party took place on Monday and there were an estimated 100,000 people watching and taking part in the celebrations.

Jack: The parade started in Jubilee Square in Leicester City Centre. Jubilee Square is a new square in Leicester that was built in 2013 to celebrate the Queen’s diamond jubilee in 2012.

Rich: A jubilee is special anniversary, usually used for anniversaries of when kings and queens started their reign, and a diamond jubilee is a jubilee that celebrates 60 years.

Jack: After Jubilee Square, the next stop on the bus route was the Clock Tower in Leicester city centre. This is the old part of Leicester. the Clock Tower was built in 1868 and it is a major meeting point in Leicester.

Rich: The tower is named after four important people in the 19th century who were from Leicester.

Jack: The bus then goes up London Road and past Curve which is a theatre designed by Rafael Vinoly, a famous architect from Uruguay.

Rich: The parade then goes past Leicester train station. Leicester was one of the first cities to be served by railway when the train first arrived in the city in 1832. The station was rebuilt in the 1870s and is beautiful example of Victorian architecture. The station clock is the only one in the UK that still needs to be wound up by hand!

Jack: I bet you need strong hands to wind that clock up! The bus then finished its journey in Victoria Park where the players were greeted by 100,000 fans and celebrated on stage with the trophy.

Rich: The park was opened in 1882 and in the 1880s a football team called Leicester Fosse, later to become Leicester City, played here so it was probably a good place to have the party!

Jack: It looked like a great celebration. Right, when we were talking about Leicester’s parade you might have noticed we used lots of examples of the passive.

Rich: Jack said ‘The Clock Tower was built in 1868’ and ‘ the tower is named after four important people’.

Jack: We form the passive with the verb ‘to be’ in the correct form like the present or the past and add the third form of the verb or the past participle. We use the passive when the thing that did the action is not important, or we’re not sure who did the action, or it is obvious.

Rich: Everybody knows that builders build things. It is obvious. It’s not necessary to say ‘Builders built the Clock Tower in 1868’. In the other example we don’t know who did the naming so we can’t use a natural sounding active sentence so we use a passive sentence.

Jack: We’ve got more examples of how to use the passive on the Podcast page on the Premier Skills English website if you want to learn more.

Rich: That brings us to this week’s questions. Question 1: Can you describe a parade route for a winning football team from a city in your country? Which landmarks would the bus pass?

Jack: Question 2: Leicester celebrated in their city with an open top bus parade. How do winning teams celebrate their successes in your country?

Rich: Question 3: What are some of the most famous landmarks and buildings in your city? Can you tell us about them? Can you use the passive to describe some of the buildings?

Jack: If you want to learn more about Leicester City, the players and the club, and learn more football English, then sign up for our new course: Leicester City: Champions of England.

Rich: And remember, if you want us to correct your comments just write ‘correct me’ at the beginning of your message.

Rich: Right, do you have a new football phrase for our listeners to guess, Jack?

Jack: Yes, I do. This week’s football phrase is ** ** **** *** ****. It is a cliche that is used in football a lot by players and managers in interviews. I imagine everyone connected to Leicester City is **** *** **** at the moment. It means to be very, very happy. It is the opposite of the cliche to be sick as a parrot which means to be very, very disappointed. To find the answer to this week’s football phrase you probably have to look up to the sky!

Rich: It’s a strange phrase but these types of phrases are definitely interesting to learn.

Jack: Have you got a prediction for us this week, Rich?

Rich: The Premier League season may be over but Manchester Utd and Crystal Palace are not on their holidays yet. This weekend sees the two teams play in the 135th FA Cup Final at Wembley Stadium. United have won the Cup 11 times and Crystal Palace have never won it so Utd are the favourites. It’s a repeat of the 1990 final when the match finished in a 3-3 draw and Utd won a replay 1-0. There are no replays these days and I can’t see this match having so many goals. I’m going to go for a Utd win. Final score: Manchester Utd 3-1 Crystal Palace

Jack: In this season of shocks, I’m going to go for the underdog. I think Palace will win 1-0.

Rich: Remember! If you want to sign up for our new football English course about Leicester City, just click the link on the side of this page.

Jack: Right, anyway that’s it for today - we’ve run out of time! Thanks for listening. And don’t forget to write your answers to our questions, your predictions and anything you want to say 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!