Podcast 28

Jack: Hello my name’s Jack and welcome to this week’s Premier Skills English podcast.

Rich: Hi everyone. I’m Rich and every week we talk about football and help you with your English.

Jack: This week, we’re going to talk about Leicester City’s Jamie Vardy, who broke a goal scoring record this weekend.

Rich: And the language focus is on invitations and the phrases we use to invite people to different events like parties or meals and we’ll look at how to say yes (accept) or no (decline) these invitations.

Jack: Rich will make another Premier League prediction. And, of course, 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 Chris... his favourite Premier League team is Sunderland.

Rich: We had lots of correct entries so congratulations to everybody who got it right. I think this one was really interesting because Chris spoke about the history of the city, when he spoke about the coal mining industry.

Jack: And he also spoke about the Geordies, who are Sunderland’s local rivals - the Geordie accent and vocabulary is very interesting and we have a lesson all about it on the website. I’ve put a link to it on the side of this page if you’d like to take a look later.

Rich: I saw that Sadulla from Uzbekistan mentioned some Geordie vocabulary in the comments section, but I guess most people got the right answer when Chris said the Stadium of Light because that’s the name of Sunderland’s stadium. Maybe it will be more difficult this week!

Jack: Right, anyway, who is this week’s winner?

Rich: We have selected a winner at random from the correct answers and the tenth winner of the What’s my team? competition is Tokomoney a Manchester City fan from Georgia. Congratulations Tokomoney, we’ll be in contact with you this week.

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

Rich: Last week we spoke about who we thought was the best Premier League striker of the last 10 years.

Jack: And we had lots of comments from you. Many of you agreed and lots of you disagreed and it was great to see so many of you using different phrases from the podcast to agree and disagree.

Rich: Yes, lots of you wrote to us to ask us why we hadn’t mentioned ex-Chelsea striker  Didier Drogba.

Jack: Aragorn1986 and Okhilleus7 from Montenegro, MilanSteva from Serbia, Bear28 from Georgia, Michelterzikhan from Armenia all think Didier Drogba is the best Premier League striker of the last 10 years.

Rich: Quite a few of you, including Kortomalteze from Serbia, grigor25 from Armenia and HakanUslu1881 from Turkey went for Arsenal’s Thierry Henry, although, apart from a brief return on loan, he hasn’t played in the Premier League since 2007.

Jack: Dan4UK from Ukraine went for Liverpool’s Luis Suarez and Mahirsijamija from Bosnia, another Liverpool fan, went for Robbie Fowler while Quoc Thanh from Vietnam, SalvaGH from Spain, Nyinyi from Myanmar, Prsn from Uzbekistan and Irma Verulashvilii and David MVP from Georgia chose ex-Manchester Utd and Arsenal striker Robin van Persie.

Rich: But more than half of you agreed with Jack and said that Wayne Rooney has been the best Premier League striker in the last 10 years.

Jack: This phrase ‘go for’ is a useful phrase to learn. Like when you said  Grigor25 from Armenia went for Thierry Henry.

Rich: To go for something means to choose something or in this case someone.

Jack: So... Who’s the best player in the Premier League this season?

Rich: I’d have to go for Jamie Vardy.

Jack: And best manager?

Rich: I’d go for Leicester again and choose Claudio Ranieri - he’s been brilliant. And we’re going to speak a bit more about Vardy and Ranieri in the next section.

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

Rich: Manchester City went back to the top of the table, Spurs are now unbeaten in 13 Premier League matches - a Premier League record for the team from North London, and there are only 6 points between the top 6 clubs at the top of the table.

Jack: But the big Premier League news this weekend was of course, Jamie Vardy. The Leicester striker broke the Premier League record for scoring in consecutive matches and has now scored in 11 games in a row.

Rich: He scored the opening goal in a 1-1 draw against Manchester Utd. I think it is an outstanding achievement, especially because he’s not playing for one of the bigger teams.

Jack: And on a personal level it’s also a remarkable achievement because a few seasons ago he was playing non-league football and earning just £30 a week.

Rich: You can read more about Jamie Vardy in our player of the week article - I’ve put a link on the side of this page.

Jack: And thousands of fans went on social media to congratulate the striker. And many started using the Twitter hashtag JamieVardy’sParty.

Rich: But one person who is not too happy is Vardy’s boss Leicester manager Claudio Ranieri. When asked if he had been invited to Jamie Vardy’s party he joked that nobody had invited him to the ‘Vardy Party’.

Jack: The Leicester manager also joked that all the Leicester players had to come for extra training the day after the party as a punishment for not inviting their manager!

Rich: It’s a pity because Ranieri could have brought pizza!

Jack: That’s true - he’s been running a pizza incentive plan this season for all his players.

Rich: An incentive is something that encourages people to do something and Ranieri has said that he will buy pizza for all the players, every time the team keeps a clean sheet  - a clean sheet is the phrase we use when a team doesn’t concede any goals.

Jack: Pizza as an incentive, eh? Everybody loves pizza. I guess they’re not too happy though, they’ve only kept two clean sheets all season.

Rich: All this talk about parties and invitations reminds me Jack. It’s my birthday next week and I was wondering if you’d like to come round to my house - we’re having a party.

Jack: That sounds great. I’d love to come. When is it?

Rich: Saturday from about eight.

Jack: Saturday?? Oh no, I’m sorry, I think I’ve got something on. I’ll have to get back to you about it. If I can’t, do you fancy going out for something to eat on Sunday?

Rich: Sure. We’ll have to do it early, I need to get back to watch the match. Liverpool are playing Newcastle at four.

Jack: We could watch the match after? Are you up for it?

Rich: Sounds like a plan to me.

Jack: You may have noticed we used some expressions for invitations and to accept or decline invitations, that is to say yes or no to the invitation.

Rich: An invitation is a request to somebody to do something and can be written or spoken and informal or formal. The ones you heard us use were informal spoken invitations. I used the phrase, ‘I was wondering if you’d like…..’ and Jack used ‘Do you fancy….’

Jack: And to accept or to say yes to an invitation we can use phrases like, ‘I’d love to’, ‘That sounds great’, ‘Sure’, ‘Sounds like a plan to me’.

Rich: And to decline or to say no to an invitation we’re usually less direct and may say phrases like, ‘I think I have something else on’ which means ‘I’m doing something else’ and we nearly always apologise by saying ‘sorry’ or ‘I’m afraid…’.

Jack: We’ve put some activities below to help you with these and a couple of links to LearnEnglish. There’s a nice video about how to decline an invitation and in the grammar section, there are some activities on modal verbs that can help you with this topic.

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

Jack: 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.

Rich: And for each of the 20 podcast competitions the lucky winner will receive a fantastic Samsung Galaxy Tablet. We wish you the best of luck!

Jack: Right, so this week, our Premier League fan is Alison. Listen to Alison's riddle and try to work out what’s her team?

Alison: We’ve just been promoted this season and I hope we’re going to stay in the PL for a long time. We’re known as the Canaries and that’s why we play in yellow. At every home match we sing ‘On the Ball City’ which is the oldest football song in the world.

Rich: ’On the Ball City.’ It’s not as good as ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’.

Jack: Right, it’s time for your Premier League prediction.

Rich: Before you say anything, I know I got it wrong again last week.

Jack: Yes, I have noticed a pattern developing.

Rich: This week I’m going to make a prediction about my team Liverpool, who are away to Newcastle on Sunday. Liverpool’s season seems to be improving and they are now only 6 points from the top of the table in sixth place. Newcastle are having an awful season and lost 5-1 to Palace in their last game and 3-0 to Leicester in their last home match. Newcastle’s St. James’ Park is usually a difficult place to go to but I’m going to predict a convincing win for the Reds. Final score: Newcastle Utd 1-3 Liverpool

Jack: You really shouldn’t predict a Liverpool win, not with your predictions skills!

Rich: I know, I know.

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 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.