Learn English Through News: How Does the Soccer World Cup Work?

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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