Lesson Transcript

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 semifinals, 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 keywords, 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,” means the main tournament. “That” here means the main tournament. So, “prior to,” before the main tournament is a 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. 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 used. 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 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 8” refers to final eight teams, “a final 8 is determined.”
Then, “The final 8 play in the quarterfinals and determine teams for semifinals.” So, here's a hint. I've included “last four teams” here. So, “semifinals” means the last four teams. Semifinals is the round, right before, just before the final match. So, that means four teams play in the semifinal round. The round before the semifinal round is the quarterfinal round. In the quarterfinal round, the final eight teams play. In order, it's quarterfinal, semifinal, final. In the final match, two teams play.
Okay, “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.
Okay, 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 kicked 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 keyword 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." 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, here's a list of the keywords that were used or discussed in this lesson. 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. 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 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 you liked the video, don't forget to give it a thumbs up, subscribe to our channel and check us out at EnglishClass101.com for some other things to help you in your English Studies.
Thanks very much for watching this episode of Current Events in English and we'll see you again next time. Bye-bye.
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