Woman: How often do you watch football?
Man: “How often” is a question phrase used to find out the habits of a person. Now listen to an example of this phrase:
Woman: How often do you watch football?
Man: I watch football on TV every Sunday afternoon and in the week if there is a game on.
Woman: Once, twice, three times a week.
Man: To say how frequently we do something, we can use once to say we do something one time, twice for two times, then after two we say three times, four times etc. For example:
Woman: How often do you go to the stadium?
Man: I used to go once or twice a week, but, now I have less free time, I go about three times a month.

Woman: Which team do you support?
Man: This is what you ask, when you want to know somebody’s favourite football team. Listen to this short conversation:
Woman: Which team do you support?
Man: I support Liverpool, what about you?
Woman: I’m a Blades fan.
Woman: Do you think England will win the world cup? I think so.
Man: We use “do you think…” when you want to know somebody’s opinion. An affirmative response is “I think so”, and a negative response is “I don’t think so”. For example:
Woman: Do you think England will win the world cup?
Man: I don’t think so. I think Italy will win.
Woman: Yes, I think so too.

Woman: Now you will listen to a short TV interview between a journalist and a football supporter.

Woman: Which team do you support?
Man: I support Manchester United.
Woman: How often do you watch them play?
Man: Well, I watch every match on the TV, but, I only go to watch them at the stadium when they play at home in Manchester.
Woman: How often do they play at home?
Man: About twice a month.
Woman: Do you think they’ll win the champions league?
Man: I don’t think so. Since David Beckham left for Madrid, they haven’t played as well.
Woman: What about the world cup? Do you think England will win?
Man: If only! I hope so, but I don’t think we are strong enough. Who do you think will win?
Woman: I don’t know. I like watching the world cup though, it’s so exciting.

What is your position in the team? I’m a goalkeeper/an attacker/mid-field.

Which team do you support? I’m a Liverpool fan. / I support Liverpool.

Are you a Manchester United supporter? Yes, I am/No, I’m not. I’m a Chelsea supporter.

Who is your favourite player? I think David Beckham is great!

How often do you go to see a match? I go to the stadium every Sunday.

Woman: A nickname.
Man: This is an informal name used instead of a real name. It is used between family and friends and also for football clubs.
Listen to this short conversation:
Man: What’s your name?
Woman: Well my real name is Joanne, but my friends call me kiwi.
Man: Why’s that?
Woman: Because my mother’s from New Zealand.

Woman: Blades
Man: This is the nickname of Sheffield United. Sheffield is a city famous for its steel industry, and a blade is flat sharp part of a knife. Now listen:
Woman: Which football team do you support?
Man: The Blades.
Woman: Excuse me?
Man: Sheffield United, but we call them the blades.
Woman: Owls.
Man: Sheffield, like most English cities has 2 football teams, the other one is Sheffield Wednesday, its nickname is the owls. An owl is a bird of the night with large eyes that “twiteroos”. Sheffield is located next to a large park called Hillsborough, where there are lots of these birds, hence the name.
Woman: Aah. You’re from Sheffield, you must support the blades.
Man: No way! I’m an owls fan.

Woman: Now let’s listen to some information about the origins of English football clubs nicknames, adapted from footballculture.net.

Woman: Forwards.
Man: Forwards are the players whose main task is to score goals. They are the attackers and are often called strikers. The ball is passed to them by the midfielders, and then they have to kick the ball in the goal. For this, they are often very famous and paid a lot of money. Listen to this:
Woman: Which forwards are playing today?
Man: Well I heard Wayne Rooney was injured, so the strikers will probably be David Beckham and Michael Owen.

Woman: Defenders.
Man: These are the players who specialise in the prevention of goals being scored by opponents. Listen to this:
Woman: I don’t believe it Totti is going to score, where are the defenders?
Man: What defenders, he’s got an open goal, the defenders are still in the centre of the pitch. Run you……..!
Woman: Goalkeeper.
Man: This is the player that stands in front of the goal and tries to stop the other team from scoring. They are often called “goalies” and are criticised a lot if they let the ball in the goal. Listen to this:
Woman: What an incredible save! What a goalie.
Man: Buffon is one of the best goalkeeper’s in the world, he rarely makes a mistake.
Woman: Referee.
Man: This man is normally dressed in black and has a whistle. He is the official person who controls the match and prevents players from breaking the rules. His decisions regarding facts connected with play are final – so they are often very criticised. Listen to this:
Woman: Is the referee blind? Didn’t he see that?
Man: Oi, referee, open your eyes, that ball was a foul.

Man: American football.
Woman: In America, this sport is referred to simply as football. It is very similar to the sport rugby, except the players wear protective clothing…. And get paid a lot more money.
Man: I don’t understand the rules of American football.
Woman: Well I don’t understand the rules of football, nor why everybody gets so excited about it.
Man: Footie.
Woman: This is a contraction of football, and is often used in informal British English to talk about the sport.
Man: Is there any footie on the telly this afternoon?
Woman: Urgh. Does every Sunday afternoon have to involve football? Here’s the remote control.

Woman: Imagine you are hosting an American colleague, and you have taken them to watch a football match, and you have to explain the basics of the game to someone whose national sport isn’t football, or rather soccer.

Man: This is a really important match for us, it will decide if we go into the premier league or not.
Woman: What’s the premier league?
Man: Well, football, I mean soccer, has different groups, and the first division, that is the best teams are in the premier league.
Woman: Which is your team, those in pink, or those in blue and white?
Man: Blue and white.
Woman: How many are in each team? And who is that man dressed in black?
Man: There are 11 players in each team, and the man in black is the referee, he makes sure the players keep to the rules.
Woman: Okay, but what are they doing in the centre now.
Man: Oh, it’s kick off, the match is about to start. Come on you blues…!
Woman: What are they doing? What do they have to do?
Man: Well, you see those white poles at the end of the pitch, one team has to kick the ball through them at one end, and the other at the other end.
Woman: Okay, I think, I’ve got it, there are 22 men running around after a leather ball, trying to kick it under a metal pole….
Man: Well, … there is a little bit more to it than that.

Man: Active: They make the best ice-cream in Italy. Passive: The best ice-cream is made in Italy.

Woman: Active: Somebody cleans the streets at night. Passive: The streets are cleaned at night.

Man: Active: Someone stole my car. Passive: My car was stolen.
Woman: But, how do we form the passive? What have we done to change the active sentence “they play cricket in England,” “to Cricket is played in England”? Rule 1 for changing active to passive is, move the object to the beginning of the sentence, For example:

Man: They play basketball at the stadium.
Woman: Basketball is played at the stadium.
Woman: Listen to another example:

Woman: They repaired the road.
Man: The road was repaired.

Woman: Rule 2 for changing active to passive, replace the active verb with the same tense of the verb “to be” and add the past participle of the active verb. For example:

Man: They make playstations in Japan.
Woman: Playstations are made in Japan.
Woman: Listen to another example:

Woman: Somebody cleaned the windows.
Man: The windows were cleaned.

Woman: If the person who does the action is mentioned, then we connect them by using the word “by”. For example:

Man: David Beckham scored the winning goal.
Woman: The winning goal was scored by David Beckham.
Woman: Listen to another example:

Woman: The Romans built the fort.
Man: The fort was built by the Romans.

Woman: Now listen out for the passive in the dialogue: pay attention to how it is used.
Imagine you are discussing international football with some English speaking friends:
Woman: I’m sure Germany won the last world cup.
Man: Don’t be ridiculous, the last world cup was won by Brazil.
Woman: Are you sure? Well they must have won the European cup.
Man: Wrong again, the last European cup was won by Portugal.
Woman: Who do you think will win this time?
Man: Well, I hope that this world cup will be won by Italy, but, I’m not sure.
Woman: Are you going to watch it?
Man: Only on TV, the games are being held in Germany, and I couldn’t get a ticket.
Woman: When does it start?
Man: Soon, and all the games will be shown on TV, so I’m going to be busy.
Woman: Urgh! The whole world will go football mad for the next few weeks, is there anywhere in the world that football isn’t played?
Man: Mmm, let me think.