Premier Vocabulary is a mini-podcast for you to learn football English one word at a time. We have three different levels for you: easy, medium and hard.

This episode is medium so we’re looking at football words and phrases you need to describe what’s happening on the pitch or words and phrases fans and commentators on TV might use. There are lots of phrasal verbs to learn at this level.

Summary

Learn more football vocabulary with Premier Skills English. Each lesson in our Premier Vocabulary section looks at one football word or phrase. This lesson looks at the phrase bounce back.

You can find more lessons on the side of this page.

Transcript

Rich: Hello my name’s Rich and welcome to Premier Skills English - Premier Vocabulary.

Jack: Hi there! I’m Jack. We’re here to help you with your football English. Premier Vocabulary is a mini-podcast for you to learn football English one word at a time.

Rich: Don’t forget you can always find the transcript for all our podcasts on the Premier Skills English website. Premier Vocabulary has three different levels: easy, medium and hard.

Jack: This episode is medium so we’re looking at football words and phrases you need to describe what’s happening on the pitch or words and phrases fans and commentators on TV might use. There will be lots of phrasal verbs to learn at this level.

Rich: The phrase we are looking at in this episode is bounce back.

Jack: Bounce back is a phrasal verb and can be used to speak about things that happen on and off the football pitch.

Rich: It means to recover or recover from something. Let’s have a look at some football examples and then some more general examples.

Jack: We often use the phrase when we want to be supportive after a match. Sometimes I feel a bit down when Arsenal lose an important match.

Rich: Yes, when I speak to Jack on a Monday I often have to cheer him up. I might say things like don’t worry Jack they’ll bounce back ... after Arsenal have suffered another heavy defeat.

Jack: And they usually do bounce back. They recover from a defeat and might win their next game and the one after that. They bounce back.

Rich: They bounce back from a defeat. It’s a phrasal verb I often use when I make the Premier League prediction in our football podcasts on Mondays.

Jack: Here Rich usually uses bounce back from something. Usually a defeat or a disappointing result. I think this week he said something like Manchester City will want to bounce back from their shock defeat against Leicester City.

Rich: So we can just bounce back or bounce back from something. We don’t only use it to talk about teams though. We can also use it to talk about players.

Jack: When a player is injured they often say they hope to bounce back quickly or bounce back from injury quickly. Here are a few examples we found online.

Rich: Wilshere can bounce back from injury blow. Neymar vows to bounce back from injury. Fred backs Paul Pogba to bounce back from injury woes.

Jack: We also use bounce back to talk about things away from football and it’s used in a similar way.

Rich: It’s usually used to speak about illness, injury or some kind of success or failure.

Jack: My friend is a bit of a business entrepreneur and is always starting up new businesses. Not many of them have worked out but he always seems to bounce back with his next money-making idea.

Rich: My sister lost her job recently and is feeling a bit down but I’m sure she’ll bounce back and find something new soon.

Jack: The stock market seems to have bounced back from record losses earlier in the year.

Rich: So there are a few other examples of how we use bounce back. Are there any more?

Jack: Emails. You can send an email and it gets bounced back, doesn’t it?

Rich: Ah, yes maybe because you wrote the wrong address. The email gets sent back to you - it gets bounced back.

Jack: There is the final whistle!

Rich: We’ll be back soon with more Premier Vocabulary from Premier Skills English.

Jack: Bye for now and enjoy your football.

Discuss

Can you think of a player who bounced back from a serious injury?

Is it easy to bounce back from a big defeat?