Advanced everyday english: Advanced vocabulary, phrasal verbs, idioms and expressions - Collins Steven 2011

Chapter one in use

Listen to the CD track 2

Interview with football manager Ted Davies

INTERVIEWER: Good afternoon,Ted.Welcome to the show.

DAVIES: Thanks very much, delighted to be here.

INTERVIEWER: Let me start by asking you a few background questions. Is it true that you were first taken on by Winchester United as a dogsbody?

DAVIES:Well, that’s quite right. As a youngster, I used to go round with the chairman’s son, and one day his father offered me the job of cleaning the players’boots. All the guys today give me a lot of stick about it. But I was a cocky lad even then. I knew I had it in me to climb the ladder. I always felt in my element at this club.

INTERVIEWER: Many people are baffled as to why you never made it as a regular first team player. You are on record as saying that you were occasionally played out of position.

DAVIES:That must be the understatement of the year. I only ever featured as a defender, which really rubbed me up the wrong way, since I was a gifted winger. The problem was, I didn’t know how to go about adapting to new positions.

INTERVIEWER: In today’s team you seem to have a lot of young players coming through. How do you encourage them?

DAVIES: I try not to bog them down with technicalities. Some of them are quite touchy when I have a go at them for something. Others need a lot of pushing to get them going. I know it’s a cliche, but they will all have to go through a lot of hardship before they get to the top.

INTERVIEWER: Thanks for your time. Good luck for the championship

RADIO NEWS

NEWSREADER: Good evening. This is the six o’clock news. Today the outgoing Home Secretary denied reports that the backlog of passport applications has caused millions of holidaymakers to miss their flights. He said, “You cannot go by the scare stories of the press. Everything is under control.” However, a spokesman for the Travellers’ Bureau said, “There’s a rumour going about that the Prime Minister has admitted, off the record, that all decisions as to how to solve the problem have been left up in the air. ”We will, of course, keep all listeners posted.

In other news, Members of Parliament (MPs) have been told to brush up on their European languages. There has been a survey conducted in the House of Commons questioning new members on their foreign language abilities. What came through most of all was that only a few of the up and coming politicians could get by in a foreign tongue. Some of these were even proficient enough to find loopholes in European legislation written in French. However, the majority of MPs only spoke English, and struggled with basic grammar and punctuation even in their own language. They were urged to pencil in dates for language tuition courses. The Minister for European Affairs warned the House that there was a lot at stake in Europe, and that we couldn’t afford to be able to converse in only one language.