Lead-in
over 200 / every four years / six rings / 77BC / Greece
All of these are about one thing. What is it?
One is incorrect. Which one do you think it is?
Can you think of questions in order to obtain these answers?
- Do you watch the Olympic® Games on TV?
- Would you like to win an Olympic® medal? For which sport?
- Why do sports people think the Olympisc® are so important?
- Which sport is your favourite?
- Which sport is your least favourite?
- Which Olympic® sport is the most dangerous?
- Do you think there are any sports that shouldn't be in the Olympics®?
Language corner: sport
- When you serve a ball, you hit it in order to start playing a game (tennis, table tennis, etc.) We can also use this as noun, eg It was a very fast serve.
- When you pass a ball to someone, you kick it or throw it or give it to another player (in football, rugby, polo, etc.)
Cultural corner
- The Olympic® triathlon is considerably shorter than the Ironman. It is a 1.5km swim, 40 km bike ride and a 10 km run.
- Ironman is organized by the World Triathlon Corporation (WTC) and it consists of a 3.86 km swim, a 180km bike ride and a 42.2 km run. It is raced in that order and without a break. It is widely considered to be one of the most difficult one-day sporting events in the world. Most Ironman events have a strict time limit of 17 hours to complete the race.
- The Sunday Times is a serious newspaper in the UK.
- Prime-time TV referst to TV shown in the evening when a large number of people are watching.
- Household names arefers to people who are very well-known.
Grammar: passive
The passive is formed as follows:
be + past participle
If the active sentence uses the past simple, eg
He took the dog out for a walk,
Then the passive is made with the verb be in the same tense plus a past participle, eg
The dog was taken out for a walk.
The two sentences are talking about the same thing, but the emphasis is different.
-> In the first sentence, we are more interested in the person who takes the dog out for a walk; in the second sentence we are more interested in the dog that is being taken out.
We use by + agent in the following situations:
- when we want to name the doer of an action.
- when we want to make a dramatic effect by placing information about who/what did something at the end of a sentence, saving the new information until last, eg The race was won ... by a 60-year-old!
- when we want to make a fluent, direct link to the following sentence, eg The dog was taken out by Charles. He is a great dogwalker.
Inspiring Iron Man participants
Cultural corner: the Olympics®
What do you know about the Olympics®?
1) Where and when did the ancient Olympics® begin?
2) When did the ancient Olympics® end?
3) When did the modern Olympics® restart?
4) Who restarted the modern Olympics®?
5) How many sportsmen took part in the first modern games?
6) How often are the summer Olympics® held?
7) When are the winter Olympics® held?
8) What prizes did athletes in the ancient Olympic® Games get if they won? What do athletes get today (first, second and third place)?
9) What tragic event took place in the 1972 Olympic® Games in Munich?
10) What do the five rings of the Olympic® symbol represent?
KEY
1) Greece, 776BC
2) 393AD
3) 1896
4) Pierre de Coubertin
5) 250
6) every four years
7) two years after the summer Olympic® Games
8) a crown of olive leaves; gold, silver, bronze medals
9) terrorists killed eleven Israeli athletes and a policeman
10) they represent the five continents and the way they are all connected to each other
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