Hello my name’s Jack and welcome to the weekly round-up called This Week on Premier Skills English.

In This Week, we’ve got lots of interesting words and phrases to help you talk about football in English.

If you are listening to this podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify you can also visit the Premier Skills English website at premierskillsenglish.britishcouncil.org where you’ll be able to download the podcast.

On the Premier Skills English website, you can read the transcript and join the Premier Skills English community by completing a language task in the comments section. This will really help you remember the new words and phrases from the stories from the Premier League.

This is the second of my Premier League Predictions episodes. When I was writing the script for these predictions, I saw that there was just too much interesting language to talk about in one episode. But as it’s the start of the season and I want to talk about the football, I’m releasing these prediction episodes as special podcasts over five days.

Yesterday, I made a prediction about the teams that will struggle to survive in the Premier League and today, I am going to make a prediction about which team is going to surprise people the most.

To prepare for this podcast, I have read a lot of predictions. So in my predictions, I’m using phrases I found on news websites and blogs.

After my prediction, I will talk a little bit about the language I used.

But before I make my second prediction, I want to give you the answer to yesterday’s football phrase.

If you didn’t hear it yesterday, here’s one more chance to guess now.

Yesterday’s football phrase was a team. That was a massive clue. The fans of this club are known as the Toon Army and the club mascot is a magpie named Monty. Do you know which club was yesterday’s football phrase?

Congratulations to Alex from Ukraine, Mobeckham from Turkey, AhmadAmr from Egypt and Hasan from Turkey.

You worked out that the team I was looking for was Newcastle United.

Keep listening till the end of the podcast for a new football phrase.

Now, it’s time for me to make my second prediction.

Question 2. Which team will surprise people the most?

On one of the websites I looked at, pundits were asked who they thought would be the surprise package of the season. The consensus was clear so I’m not sure if this really will be a surprise for anyone, but this would also have been my pick. With Vincent Kompany at the helm and some clever signings, Burnley are set to survive comfortably back in the league and may even challenge for a top half finish. When you look at the value of the Burnley squad, I’m confident that Kompany’s going to prove to be the best value for money and will earn more points per pound spent than anyone else in the league. That’s not to say that the team will find it easy; but Kompany’s hunger and desire to learn and improve will make them an interesting team to follow.

Language Focus

The language that I am going to focus on from this prediction is:

• Consensus
• To be set to do something
• Modal verbs may/might/could
• Future forms - Going to and will

The word consensus means an opinion or decision that most people agree with. It’s generally used to talk about the opinion of a group of people. So you might hear someone say that among dentists, the consensus is that electric toothbrushes are a good idea. If there’s a problem at your work and most people agree that something needs to change, you might say there’s a general consensus at work that there’s a problem. I read predictions from lots of different pundits and almost all of them picked Burnley for the surprise package of the season so there was a consensus about the surprise package.

The word set has lots of meanings in English. When you are making predictions, you can use the adjective form after a verb. So I said Burnley are set to survive which means they are ready and prepared to survive so I think it’s likely that they will survive. You can also say that someone looks set to do something. Perhaps your boss looks set to retire and take up golf or if you see your neighbour has packed their car to go on holiday, you might say that they look set to go.

I said Burnley may even challenge for a top half finish. The use of modal verbs for predictions is something that is taught quite early on to learners of English. I think that people who are listening to this podcast will be familiar with this language so I’m not going to spend long. You can use the modal verbs may, might and could before a verb to describe an action that you think is possible. When talking about possibilities, the language you use can show different levels of certainty, that is how confident you are that something will happen. So if I say Burnley may finish in the top half of the table, I am saying it’s possible, but I’m not saying that I think it’s probable. I think normally, may, might and could express that something is possible, but don’t say much about the probability. The chance might be as little as 10%, but it might happen. When you are speaking, I think that you can use intonation to show that you are more confident. I might say Burnley may finish in the top 10. This sort of intonation makes it seem like I am more confident than a 10% chance ... possibly 50:50. If I add the word well and say Burnley may well finish in the top 10, I think that my confidence level is even higher, perhaps 60 or 70%.

Some language for predictions that I feel I have to talk about is the use of the future forms will and going to. This is the first language that English learners are taught to use to make predictions and it is very common. I have been using will in my explanations of other language for predictions so if you don’t know about will, I think that this podcast won’t be a lot of use for you. So ... a super fast overview of will and going to. Will is used to express predictions that are based on your opinion. So we use will in phrases like: I think they will and they probably will and I reckon they will and trust me ... they will. We use going to to make predictions based on other people’s opinion and on evidence. So you might say judging by Manchester City’s performance, they are going to win ... or the manager says they are going to do well ... However, those rules are not proper rules and if you look around and listen out enough, you will find people using will to make predictions based on evidence and going to for personal opinions, but most of the time, the rule works.

Language Challenge

Your challenge today is to make your own prediction about which team will surprise people the most. I’m going to publish another episode tomorrow with my third prediction and then another and another. For each episode, I want to read about your predictions and then, at the end of the season, I’ll look back and we can see whose predictions were the most accurate.

Football Phrase

Now it’s time for today's football phrase.

Today ’s football phrase is a ground. From 2010 to 2020, if you had gone to watch a match at this ground, you would have seen Kayla the eagle who flew around this ground before every match. Do you know which ground I’m describing?

If you know the answer, be sure to leave it in a comment on the page for this podcast on Premier Skills English.

And that’s all I have time for today. Before I finish, I just wanted to say that I hope you found this podcast useful, and I hope all of you stay fit and healthy and safe.

Bye for now and enjoy your football.