2024 Paris Olympics 🥇 Learn English With The News

Today, we're going to read  a news article together.

And by doing this, you're going  to expand your vocabulary,  

learn advanced grammar and  improve your pronunciation.

And we're going to read a news article on a very  important and topical event, the 2024 Olympics.

And this article is about the opening ceremonies.

Welcome back to JForrest English.

Of course, I'm Jennifer.

Now let's get started.

First, I'll read the headline.

5 takeaways from the opening  ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Did you watch the opening ceremonies?

Maybe you already know what  some of these takeaways are,  

but you need to know what this word means.

So what is a take away?

A take away?

This is a noun and that's why  you have an S on here because  

you need to have a singular noun or a plural noun.

So we have 5.

So it's plural with the SA.

Take away is the main idea, lesson or point.

And this is specifically from an  event, a class or a conference.

So if you go to a conference and you remember  2 main things, two main points or events,  

important information, those  two points are your takeaways.

And you could share those with your  boss or your colleagues in a meeting.

Your boss could ask you what were your takeaways?

So notice it's possessive here.

What were your takeaways from the conference?

And then you could reply and say, well, my main  takeaways are and then you can list them out.

Maybe there's only one and you make it singular.

So at the end of this lesson, your  takeaways could be a new grammar structure.

You learned how to pronounce a specific word,  

and maybe you learned 3 new words and  their meaning and how to use them.

So those are your takeaways from this lesson.

And my goal is for you to have many  takeaways because the more takeaways  

you have, the more valuable the lesson was.

So if you're excited for these  takeaways, then put let's go, let's go.

But let's go in the comments and I  promise to fill this lesson with you.

Now, don't worry about taking these notes because  I summarize everything in a free lesson PDF.

You can find the link in the description.

Now let's continue and learn  about these five takeaways,  

and hopefully you'll have  a lot of takeaways as well.

Beautiful picture of Paris here.

An opening ceremony unlike any other.

Got the 2024 Olympic Games officially  underway in Paris Friday night.

Now, one important thing to do when you're  reading is when you see a word like got or be  

or have is to understand if this is the verb on  its own or if it's being used in an expression.

So what do you think is just?

Is this the verb get conjugated  or is it part of an expression?

And what is the expression?

Well, it's to get underway.

To get underway.

That's the expression.

This simply means to start or begin.

For example, the conference will get underway  on Monday, will start, will begin on Monday.

But look at the sentence structure here, because  it's an opening ceremony unlike any other, meaning  

that this opening ceremony is unique or special  got the 2024 Olympic Games officially underway.

So it's actually saying the opening  ceremony started or began something else.

And the opening ceremony  started the Olympic Games.

So it got it underway, it started it.

So the sentence structure is a little  different from the example I gave you,  

but the meaning is the same.

And in Paris Friday night, and  truly it was one that will live on.

In Olympic legend, to live on is an  expression that means continue to be  

remembered or have a lasting impact,  which matches the context of this.

Now, we also just have the literal verb to live  

and then the correct preposition you  need when you're using a street is on.

I live on Main Street.

But based on the context of this, you understand  this is just a verb and this is a preposition.

So you always have to look at the  context to know if a word is being  

used as a verb or a noun or part of an expression.

And in this case, we'll live on in Olympic legend.

You might realize, wait, this isn't just  using the verb live and the preposition on.

So an example of continued to be remembered.

Beethoven's music will live on for years to come.

And hopefully this lesson will  live on for years to come.

Meaning three years from now, students  will still remember this lesson.

Maybe you will or new students will find  

this lesson and benefit it because of all  the takeaways they get from this lesson.

So if you hope this lesson will live on  for years to come, meaning a long time,  

an unspecified long time in  the future, put let's go.

And I want you to put let's  go because it will also help  

you make sure you remember these concepts more.

So put, let's go, let's go in the comments.

Here are 5 takeaways, main  points, Main events that you  

remember Important information 5 takeaways  from the opening of the 2024 Olympics.

Are you enjoying this lesson?

If you are, then I want to tell you  about the Finally Fluent Academy.

This is my premium training program where  we study native English speakers from TV,  

the movies, YouTube, and the news.

So you can improve your listening  skills of fast English, expand your  

vocabulary with natural expressions,  and learn advanced grammar easily.

Plus, you'll have me as your personal coach.

You can look in the description  for the link to learn more,  

or you can go to my website and  click on Finally Fluent Academy.

Now let's continue with our  lesson #1 Paris shows off.

Do you know what the phrasal verb to show off?

So this is a phrasal verb because we have  a verb show and then a preposition off  

and together these two words have one meaning.

Paris shows off.

What does that mean?

To show off is to behave in a way that is  intended to attract attention or admiration.

Important to know that this is often used  in a negative way, so if you show off,  

that's generally considered a  negative because it's annoying.

For example, let's just say the  average person owns one pair of shoes.

Okay, the average person, you, all your  friends, family, one pair of shoes.

But I own 3 pairs of shoes and  every time I see you I remind you.

Oh, I own 3 pairs of shoes.

Look at my shoes.

Oh, today I'm wearing a different pair of shoes.

I think this evening I'm going  to wear my other pair of shoes.

I'm showing off, I'm showing off.

I'm trying to get your admiration or  attention by talking about how many  

pairs of shoes I owned and the number is  higher than yours and the average person.

And you would find this annoying most likely.

But there is a time and a place  to show off and in this context  

it's not annoying because it's appropriate.

They should show off.

Paris should show off.

In a job interview, you should show off.

There are many times when this is important to do.

It wasn't exactly the night that  organizers would have hoped for,  

but the opportunity to put the city of Light.

Paris is known as the City  of Light and its culture and  

people on full display was well taken on Friday.

OK, so this is saying that Paris took advantage of  

the opportunity to display  its culture and its city.

So Paris was showing off.

But again, this is absolutely a  positive thing in this specific context.

So this is the first take away  of the opening ceremonies.

Now I have an important take  away for you during this lesson.

When you're learning a new concept, like  here, you just learned a phrasal verb.

For one, you need to know how  to use it in a full sentence.

So know how could you take this?

Put it in the past, put it in different verb  tenses, ask a question, form a negative sentence.

That's all important.

But also know if this can  be used in any other ways.

So for example, there's a noun form.

The noun form is a show off.

A show off is a person who shows off.

So remember my example of me showing  off about my three pairs of shoes?

Well, you could say Jennifer.

Jennifer's a show off.

So this is our verb to be.

Jennifer is Jennifer's a show off?

Jennifer is a person who does the  action, the verb of showing off.

Now the verb form would be  Jennifer's always showing off.

So in this case is a verb.

What verb tense did I use?

Well, we have this ING and then  we have our verb to be here.

Jennifer is always showing off,  generally with the adverb of frequency.

Always.

This is a keyword for the present simple.

But when there is a routine negative  behavior, you can use the present.

Continuous and native speakers commonly  use it, and it sounds very natural.

Jennifer's always showing off  because it's a negative behavior.

So I want you to remember these two  points as an important take away.

Let's move on to our next take  away from the opening ceremonies.

The rain tries to steal the show.

If something or someone steals the  show, do you know what this means?

The verb steal is when you take  something that does not belong to you.

So if I see this phone on a table in a restaurant  

and I take the phone and it isn't  my phone, I just stole this phone.

So to steal the show is to take the show.

In this case, it means to take the  attention, to receive all the attention,  

but when you shouldn't, because steel  means to take something you shouldn't.

So that concept is in this expression.

The attention should have been on the athletes,  

Paris, the performances, the  lights, not on the weather, right?

So the rain tries to receive all the  attention, tries to steal the show.

Let's say you organize a family gathering  and you want to announce to everyone  

your family that you are getting married, you're  having a baby, you bought a new house, a new car,  

you got a promotion, something  exciting, and you announce it.

But then your brother announces something  else and tries to get all the attention.

So my brother tried to steal the show take  the attention away from me and onto himself,  

because my brother is such a show off.

Remember that one?

Now interestingly, because we're  talking about weather here,  

there is an idiom in English  called steal my Thunder.

And that is exactly what this means.

So instead of saying my brother  tried to steal the show,  

you could say my brother  tried to steal my Thunder.

Now in this case, you could  say the show or my show.

But for Thunder, you must say my Thunder, you  can't say the Thunder, you must say my Thunder.

So now you know what that means.

And you have a common idiom  that you can use as well.

Another take away for you.

The rain had sent a warning Friday morning and  threatened through much of Friday afternoon,  

but Paris's Gray skies finally opened up about  30 minutes into the three and a half hour show.

So if the skies open up, it's another  way of saying cleared the skies cleared,  

the Gray disappeared.

You could also use just the verb open.

You don't have to use the phrasal verb open up.

You could say the Sky's finally  opened, the Sky's finally opened up.

Or you could say clear.

Now let's look into 3 1/2 hour.

Well, first of all, why are there all these  dashes and why isn't there an S on our?

Because we're talking about 3.53 and a half.

That's more than one because this, what I  highlighted, is being used as an adjective.

In the adjective form.

They general generally put dashes, so it's  easy to identify, but also the placement.

And this is an important take away.

Adjectives come before nouns, but  adjectives come after articles.

So your structure is article, adjective,  noun, very important take away.

And adjectives don't have a singular or plural,  

only nouns do, and that's why there  is no S So how could you rewrite this  

to make it to make our a noun and have it  with a plural because it's a plural noun.

How could you rewrite that?

There are different things you could say,  and this is an important exercise to really  

push your fluency and to practice and get  comfortable with different sentence structure.

Another take away, the show was 3.5 hours long.

You can verbalize and 1/2 as  .5 just to make it simpler.

The show was 3.5 hours.

So this is our noun, our regular time  reference, and it's more than one.

So I put my as and you add the word long.

The show was 3.5 hours long.

So this is the noun, and then this is an  adjective leading to perhaps the most drenched  

opening ceremony in the  history of the modern Olympics.

What does drenched mean?

And notice that pronunciation,  because this is a sound.

It's a voiced, unvoiced sound.

You just hear air.

You don't actually hear a sound,  just air drenched, drenched.

So for this, Ed, we just want a soft T.

Now, when you say the actual word,  you're going to stress it more.

But when you're saying it in  a sentence, it is very soft.

Most likely you won't hear it, but  the context will make it obvious  

that it's either the past, simple or an adjective.

Because adjectives also use this Ed ending.

Drenched means completely wet.

Another word is soaked.

So if I'm drenched, so I am, is the adjective.

It means every part of me from head to toe is wet,  

which of course could happen  in a very heavy rainstorm.

So it's saying that the opening ceremony was  drenched, meaning every part of the ceremony,  

every seat, every stand, every person,  

every object, everything involved  was completely wet, soaked, drenched.

So you might say as well,  she was drenched in sweat.

So another way you can get wet  is with sweat, water or sweat.

So she was drenched in sweat after the race.

This describes most athletes,  which is why I included it.

Or you could say tomatoes  don't like being drenched.

I have a tomato plant outside in a pot  and it doesn't like being completely wet.

It likes it when the soil is a  little bit dry, it grows better.

So tomatoes don't like being drenched.

If you're a gardener or you do any gardening,  this word will be very common for you.

Let's move on to take away #3 Céline Dion.

Do you know who this is?

A Canadian treasure.

Céline Dion returns in stunning fashion.

Stunning is a great adjective.

It means extremely beautiful.

But beautiful is very overused.

If you say to your wife or your  friend, oh wow, you look beautiful.

That dress is beautiful.

Your hair is beautiful.

Beautiful is just very overused.

But if you say to your wife, darling, you look  stunning today, it's not as commonly used.

So it will be more impactful.

And you can use this for your friend,  

a hairstyle, an outfit, refer to it as  stunning after a stunning light show.

So here, here's a great example.

They're using the same adjective again.

And instead of simply saying a beautiful  light show, they're saying stunning.

It sounds more impactful.

After a stunning light show on the Eiffel  Tower, one of the most iconic singers of  

the last several decades finally made her  return to performing after four years.

So if she made her return to performing,  it means she started performing again.

She started performing again, and this  tells you how long she wasn't performing.

So she wasn't performing for four  years and now she's performing again.

So at this event, she made  her return to performing.

You hear this expression a lot with public  figures, singers, actors, maybe even a YouTube  

made their return to creating videos, singing,  acting, performing after a period of time,  

maybe after and then some event after her  daughter's birth, after the tragic accident.

So it could be a positive event,  a negative event, but some event.

Dion had been battling stiff person syndrome.

OK, so in Celine Dion's case there  is a negative event that caused her  

to not perform for four years, which  is why now she had to make her return.

So we often use the verb battle with illnesses  

or disease because it has a  very strong emotion with that.

When you battle it, there's  a struggle, there's a fight.

And notice the verb tense.

Dion has been, has been battling.

It's the present perfect continuous because it  started in the past and continues until now.

This is an important verb tense because  if I read she has been battling,  

I know this is still something she's  struggling with, She's dealing with.

So this isn't completed.

If you say Dion had been battling the past  perfect continuous, well, I know it's completed,  

but in this case it continues until now  because that's what the verb tense means.

So another take away in this lesson is really pay  

attention to your verb tense because it  can communicates a lot of information.

Dion has been battling stiff person syndrome, a  rare neurological condition that causes spasms.

A spasm is when your your muscles  contract or move uncontrollably.

Muscle rigidity.

To be honest, I'm not too sure what this is,  

but if your muscles are rigid, it's  another word for meaning stiff.

So I guess at one point you you have  these uncontrollable muscle movements.

That's a spasm.

But then if your muscle is stiff,  

it could be very difficult for you to use  that muscle to move it if your arm is stiff.

And it could also cause a lot  of pain, I imagine as well.

I wrote stiffness because  that's a very common term.

You might even say, Oh, my neck's a little stiff.

So it means that it hurts when you move your  neck in certain ways because the muscle is stiff.

Rigid.

My neck's a little stiff.

I wrote that example there for  you because very common for  

people to deal with stiff muscles and  a heightened sensitivity to stimuli.

Stimuli is the irregular  plural of the word stimulus.

So you have one stimulus and two stimuli and  this is something that causes a reaction.

So in terms of your body, light is a stimulus  because if I shine a light into your eye,  

your pupil will react by becoming  larger or you'll close your eyes.

So the light which is a stimulus  causes your eye to react.

So she has heightened sensitivity,  which means she is more sensitive.

So maybe just the slightest light  can cause her to to really have a  

lot of pain in her eyes or have to close her eyes.

So this explains why Dion wasn't performing  for four years and then made her return.

And what a better way to do it than at the opening  

ceremonies and in stunning fashion  #4A Paris party on a Friday night.

A long dance break in the middle of the show  

encapsulated the vibe that  much of the show took on.

It was party time in the French capital.

Another take away I want you to remember is  that when you learn expressions vocabulary,  

you must understand the small words that are  required to form the expression correctly.

Because this is a mistake that I see  with all students beginner to advance,  

but it really makes your level  seem a lot less if you say in  

middle of or in or on the middle of  if you make these small mistakes.

So instead of just remembering  middle, memorize in the middle of.

You must know all the words, the correct order.

And it's really important that you don't leave any  out or replace them in the middle of something.

Now let's take a look at encapsulated,  encapsulated, aided, aided, encapsulated.

This simply means represented  or showed or displayed.

So the dance break, people dancing in the middle  

of the show, during the show, represented,  showed, displayed, encapsulated the vibe.

What's the vibe?

Well, I have it right here.

What's the vibe?

You will sound very much like a  native speaker if you use this word.

The vibe is the atmosphere or  the environment, and what the  

atmosphere or the environment  was in this case was a party.

So Paris wanted the opening ceremonies to feel  

like a party, and this dance break  represented that, encapsulated that.

So the vibe, you can use this when you  meet a new group of people and you can say,  

I don't know, I didn't really like the vibe.

You go to a new restaurant, The food.

Food was OK, but I don't know, it had a bad vibe.

I didn't like the vibe.

You didn't like the atmosphere, the surrounding,  

the environment and #5A  magnificent cauldron lighting.

So do you know what the cauldron is in the  context of the Olympics and the opening ceremony?

That is basically the big bowl, the big  ceremonial bowl where they they keep the torch.

So they light the cauldron  and it goes up in in flames.

And then that's where the Olympic torch is.

And then of course, the  torch is where the flame is.

That's what you hold in your hand.

The torch was carried by  scores of French athletes.

Scores of sounds, just like many, many  French athletes and other famous Olympians.

Repeat after me.

Olympian, Olympian.

And when the final torch bearers.

A torch bearer is the person who holds the torch.

The final torch bearers lit the Olympic cauldron.

So they take their torch  and they put it in the bowl.

The bowl has the gas or the the  material that will cause the flame,  

which was attached to a giant balloon.

It began to float.

So the whole cauldron, the bowl with the  flame, that's the IT, it began to float.

The Olympic flame ended the night  hovering over the city of Paris.

Wow, that does sound pretty  magnificent, or perhaps even stunning.

And the verb hover.

To hover this simply means to remain  in a specific place or position.

We often use this when it something is in the air.

For example, you commonly hear this with  birds or planes, helicopters, if they hover.

A helicopter hovered over my house.

It remained in position over my house.

So if the helicopter is moving, I  wouldn't say it hovered over my house.

If this is my house and the helicopter  just stayed here, I was like,  

why is that helicopter hovering over my house?

So a bird could hover in front of your window,  

remain in the in front of it  rather than just flying by.

So the this cauldron that floated into the air,  

it hovered over the city, it remained  over the city in that specific position.

So now you have the five takeaways from the  Olympic opening ceremonies and hopefully you  

have a lot of takeaways for grammar, vocabulary,  pronunciation from this lesson as well.

What I'll do now is I'll read the  article from start to finish and  

this time you can focus on my pronunciation.

5 takeaways from the opening Ceremony of  the 2024 Paris Olympics An opening ceremony  

unlike any other got the 2024 Olympic Games  officially underway in Paris Friday night,  

and truly, it was one that  will live on in Olympic legend.

Here are 5 takeaways from the opening  of the 2024 Olympics #1 Paris shows off.

It wasn't exactly the night that organizers  would have hoped for, but the opportunity  

to put the city of light and his culture  and people on full display was well taken.

On Friday #2 the rain tries to steal the show.

The rain had sent a warning Friday morning and  threatened through much of Friday afternoon,  

but Paris's Gray skies finally opened up about  30 minutes into the three and a half hour show,  

leading to perhaps the most drenched opening  ceremony in the history of the modern Olympics #3.

Céline Dion returns in stunning fashion after  a stunning light show on the Eiffel Tower.

One of the most iconic singers of the last several  

decades finally made her return  to performing after four years.

Dion have been battling stiff person syndrome,  

a rare neurological condition that causes  spasms, muscle rigidity, and a heightened  

sensitivity to stimuli such as sound and  lights #4A Paris party on a Friday night.

A long dance break in the middle of the show  

encapsulated the vibe that  much of the show took on.

It was party time in the French capital  #5A magnificent cauldron lighting the  

torch was carried by scores of French  athletes and other famous Olympians.

And when the final torch bearers  lit the Olympic cauldron,  

which was attached to a giant  balloon, it began to float.

The Olympic flame ended the night  hovering over the city of Paris.

Do you want me to make more  lessons just like this?

If you do, then put let's go, Put,  let's go, let's go in the comments.

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