hi everybody welcome to current events in
English a series where we talk about something currently happening in the
world something happening now and we learned some vocabulary words and how to
talk about it in English in this episode we're going to talk about world cup the
world cup soccer or World Cup football a very popular sporting event that is
happening right now as we're filming this so today I'm going to introduce
some vocabulary words and we're going to talk a little bit about how to explain
the world cup to someone so let's begin with a quick reading of some text that
shares a little bit about what the world cup is and then we'll talk about some
key vocabulary words so let's take a look you'll see our key vocabulary words
in bold in this text okay let's get started first the world cup refers to
the FIFA World Cup a soccer tournament held once every four years the main
tournament is played over about a month but prior to that is a qualification
phase teams play in qualifiers to determine which teams will advance the
32 teams which pass the qualifying rounds play in the main tournament
called the world cup finals as the tournament progresses fewer and fewer
teams remain from the original 32 teams 16 teams advance from that a final 8 is
determined the final 8 play in the quarterfinals and determine teams for
the semi-finals the last four teams the final round of the tournament determines
the champion
during the tournament players aim to score goals but not every game ends with
a clear win a tie game or draw may result penalties like red cards and
yellow cards help determine which team moves forward in these cases okay so
having read the text looking at the text now let's go back over this introduction
and look at some key words some key expressions that are used to explain the
World Cup so here in the first sentence we saw the World Cup refers to the FIFA
World Cup a soccer tournament held once every four years so tournament is a key
word for understanding the World Cup tournament is a contest some kind of
competition so be careful depending on your language tournament might have the
nuance might have the meaning of competition or it might not when we use
the word tournament in English it means contest it means competition there are
other teams or other players fighting to become the best at something so in this
case we see a soccer tournament it's a contest but tournament is used for
competitions specifically okay so we see tournament again in the next sentence
the main tournament is played over about a month so in other words the main
tournament takes about a month to play so there's a specific time period that
we play it and we play in that duration but prior to that so prior means before
prior to that prior to that means the main tournament that here means the main
tournament so prior to before the main tournament is a qualification phase
qualification phase let's read the next sentence first and then I'll explain
some more details so teams play in qualifiers to determine which teams will
advance so we see qualifier and we see a qualification phase so we see qualifier
qualification phase qualifying round a qualifier is a type of match so it's
like the match before a tournament before a contest
so players or teams who want to compete in a tournament who want to participate
in a tournament first join a qualifier so a qualifier if you pass the qualifier
it means you are qualified you meet the requirements to continue on to the main
tournament so a qualifying match or a qualifying round you might hear these
words use we also see a qualification phase as well so all of these refer to
the time before the main tournament when people are competing to join the actual
tournament the main tournament event then at the end of this sentence here we
see advance the verb advance so teams play in qualifiers to determine which
teams will advance so here we see will being used so first they play in a
qualifier and this is done in order to determine which we'll talk about a
little more later to determine to find out to figure out which teams will
advance to advance means to move forward so to move forward to the next round in
this case the next round of competition then we see again the 32 teams which
pass pass the qualifying rounds so pass again means they win their match in
other words so they are the best in their match those teams play in the main
tournament called the world cup finals so the world cup finals is these 32 main
teams those teams which pass the qualifying rounds okay continuing on as
the tournament progresses so progresses be careful progress and progress used as
nouns and verbs have different emphasis progress as a noun takes progress the
emphasis is on the first syllable so progress here however it's used as a
verb as the tournament progresses so as the tournament continues in other words
fewer and fewer teams remain be careful we're using fewer and fewer
because teams is a countable noun so fewer and fewer is the correct word not
less and less okay so from the original 32 teams 16 teams advance so this means
from the original 32 teams in the first round of the World Cup finals 16 teams
advance again advance means to move forward they move forward to the next
round from that so here that refers to the previous sentences 16 teams so from
that from those 16 teams a final 8 is determined a final eight final H refers
to final eight teams a final 8 is determined then the final 8 play in the
quarterfinals and determine teams for semi finals so here's a hint I've
included last four teams here so semi-finals means the last four teams
semi finals is the round right before just before the final match so that
means four teams play in the semi final round the round before the semi final
round is the quarter final round in the quarter final round the final eight
teams play so in order it's quarterfinal semi final final in the final match two
teams play ok the final round of the tournament determines the champion so
champion means the winner the winner of the contest the winning player in an
individual sport or the winning team in a team sport like soccer or football ok
let's move on to the last page of our text so for the purposes of vocabulary
let's look at some obvious things so during the tournament players aim so
meaning players try to players aim to score goals so to score a goal means the
ball goes into the goal the ball goes into the net please be careful to score
a goal is different from to shoot so to shoot means to try
to score a goal so you try to kick the ball into the goal to score means you
successfully kick the ball into the goal so be careful shoot is attempt is try
score means successfully make a goal so during the tournament players aim to
score goals but not every game ends with a clear win so a clear win means we
can't easily see who is the winner so what does this mean
it means a tie game or a draw may result so here result is used as a verb as well
that means this may happen in other words so a tie game or a draw these both
mean when a game ends in the same score for both teams so for example Team a
gets two points team B gets two points that's a tie game or a draw you might
not hear draw used for game you might not hear a draw game but you will hear a
tie game or just a tie you will also hear a draw but draw a game is not as
common at least in American English okay finally penalties like red cards and
yellow cards help determine which team moves forward or advances in these cases
so in these cases refers back to tie games or a draw so these cases this
refers to the previous sentence in this sentence we have a key word though
penalties be careful of your pronunciation not penalty but penalty
penalty the emphasis is on the first syllable
so penalties like red cards and yellow cards help determine or help us find out
help us figure out which team moves forward which sorry which team advances
in these cases so if there's a tie in other words we look at the number of
penalties from each team and decide which team moves forward from there
there are a lot of other complex rules too so to finish so here's a list of the
keywords that were you or discussed in this lesson so we have
words for talking about sporting events like tournaments competitions we have
the words to talk about the different levels in final games we have some nouns
to talk about goals scoring goals or trying to score a goal talking about how
to move forward in a competition as well and just some other words like tie and
draw and penalty that we can use to talk about other sports as well so here is
our keyword list for this lesson okay so to end today according to FIFA the World
Cup is the most widely followed and widely watched sporting event in the
world so widely widely followed or widely watched means the most people
watch it or the highest number of people watch something them the largest number
of people watch or follow follow to follow a sporting event means you check
the scores it doesn't mean you physically follow it somewhere it means
you check the scores you check the news related to that sporting event so FIFA
says that the World Cup is the most widely followed and or most widely
watched sporting event even more popular than the Olympic Games quite interesting
so I hope that you found a few new vocabulary words and got some grammar
points that you can use to talk about this topic if you are a soccer fan of
course and there are some other things that you want to know how to say please
let us know in a comment below this video if you have questions or other
comments too please feel free to let us know about those as well of course if
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