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0:00The Paris Olympic Games will begin later this month, with the opening ceremony set to take place on July 26. You are likely to see and hear discussions about the Olympic Games, the athletes, the events, and the results of the competitions. For today's lesson, we will explore this question. What are three important words to know when we talk about the Olympics? There are many possible answers, but we are going to take a close look at these three words, host, compete and expect. The Olympic Games are held every two years and take place over two to three weeks. Thousands of athletes take part. Thousands of workers, volunteers and others prepare for and run the event. Millions of people from around the world gather at the Olympic Games to watch the athletes
1:17perform. Cities around the World request to hold these huge events. They seek to host the games. 2024, we can say that cities seek to be the host of the Games. The word host can act as a noun or as a verb. When we talk about the Olympic Games, we use host, the noun, to mean the city that holds the event. Paris is the host for the 2024 Olympic Games. The verb form of host means to receive and serve guests. Paris is hosting the 2024 Olympic Games. Note that the verb form for host takes a direct object. Direct objects often answer the question, what? Paris is Hosting What? Paris is HOSTING the 2024 Olympics Games. So, we have the noun host and the verb host. Which of the two is more commonly used,
2:39you might ask? Google's Ngram Viewer has data that comes from thousands of books. We can look at how common different words are and see how the usage numbers have changed over time. We should keep in mind that the data and results are not perfect. Still, we can take away general ideas that can help us. When we compare the noun and verb forms of host in Google's Ngram Viewer, we find that the noun form is more commonly used. And what is the most commonly used word after the noun host? It is the short word of. Let's think back to our earlier example. Paris is the host of the 2024 Olympic Games. Our next important word is at the center of Olympic Games action, compete. is a verb. It means to try to win something that someone else is also trying to win.
3:59We might use the verb compete to describe the athlete's purpose for going to the Olympics. So we might say this. The athletes are competing for a medal. Note that we often use the word compete without an object. In other words, we often it in an intransitive sense. For example, we might say Seven athletes are competing today. Still, we often use the verb compete with other short words. Google's Ngram Viewer suggests that with is the most commonly used word after compete, so you are likely to hear or see something like this. Athletes go to the Olympic Games to compete with top athletes. However, we can find other short words commonly used after compete, such as for, in, and against. You might hear, Athletes are competing for gold medals.
5:14That athlete is competing in the 100-meter dash, or The athletes are competing against each other. Overall, the main idea is that the verb compete is central to discussions about the Olympics. Compete may be followed by a short word. With is the most common of these short words, but you should probably learn the other common short words as well, for, in, and against. Our final important word is expect. It is used to express our predictions. People might expect an athlete to do well. They watch the Olympic Games to see if the expectation is correct. This is part of what makes the Olympic Games exciting and partly explains why people enjoy talking about the Olympic Games. We have expect, a verb, and a related noun form, expectation. Google Ngram Viewer suggests
6:29Expect is more commonly used than expectation. We often use the verb expect with an object, in other words, in a transitive sense. The object could be a noun or noun phrase, as in The trainers expect hard work. Or we might see a structure that acts like a noun or noun phrase in a sentence. The structure to plus verb is one such structure, as in... The swimmer expects to win. Or we might use a more complex structure like this. Fans expect that runner to win gold. Today we explored a few words that connect to the Olympic Games. Of course there are many other choices. We will end this lesson with a call to action. Write to us a short description of an Olympic Games, either in the past, present or future.
7:41Be sure to use some of the words we have explored today. Send your writing in an email to learningenglish at voanews dot com. In a future lesson, we will give feedback on some of the messages that we receive. I'm John Russell.
This transcript was generated automatically from the recording, so it will contain mistakes — especially around names and places.