Your English Five a Day #7.3

E120: Dive into Week 7, Day 3 of The English Five a Day series, where we explore five enriching pieces of vocabulary each working day. Join me, Anna, as I take you on a linguistic journey, unravelling the depths of the English language.

In today's episode, we kick off with two nouns, "protagonist" and "tendency". Then we see the fantastic idiom "larger than life" and our list finishes off with the everlasting adjective "perpetual" and the verb "eliminate". Stay tuned for a pronunciation practice session and a captivating story blending football, idolisation, and the perpetual energy of players aiming to eliminate the opponent's chances at triumph on the pitch.

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Transcript

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Hello, welcome to the English Like a Native Podcast. My name is Anna, and you are listening to Week 7, Day 3 of The English Five a Day series. In this series, we explore five pieces of vocabulary every day of the working week from Monday to Friday. So, let's start today's list with a noun and it is protagonist. Protagonist. How do we spell that word? Well, it is P R O T A G O N I S T. Protagonist. A protagonist is one of the main characters in a story or a play. It's usually the character whose story is being told. Here's an example sentence."What do you think of the protagonist, Luke Skywalker, in the Star Wars movies?" Okay, next on our list is another noun and it is tendency, tendency. We spell this T E N D E N C Y. Tendency. Tendency. If someone has a tendency to do or like something, then it means they will probably do it or probably like it. So, it's something you're more likely to do. Here's an example sentence."Mike's tendency to exaggerate is well known, he does tell a good story though." What kind of tendencies do you have? For me, I have a tendency to try or want to try doing lots of different things. I have a tendency to have an idea and launch straight into it. For example, I might decide,"I've got an idea for a new YouTube channel." And then rather than thinking about it for a little while, weighing up the pros and cons, I tend to just go straight online and start the channel up and then start creating content without too much thought. It's a very bad tendency, especially if you want to be productive, you need to focus. Okay, moving on to number three, we have an idiom, larger than life. Larger than life. If something is larger than life, then it attracts a lot of attention. How are we spelling this? L A R G E R, larger. Than, T H A N. Life, L I F E. Larger than life. So, a person who is larger than life attracts a lot of attention because they're more exciting or more interesting than most people. They're usually the people who are very energetic and vibrant. You can't help but notice them. Here's an example sentence. The character that Juliana plays is larger than life. Not at all how she is in real life, she's actually quite shy." Number four on our list is the adjective, perpetual. Perpetual. We spell this P E R P E T U A L. Perpetual. Perpetual. If something is perpetual, then it continues for ever, or it's happening all the time. It's perpetual. Here's an example sentence."Oh, I'm fed up with my kids' perpetual complaining about my cooking, I'm trying to give them a variety of food and all they want is chicken nuggets and chips!" Okay, number five on our list is the verb eliminate. Eliminate. This is spelled E L I M I N A T E, eliminate. To eliminate something is to remove or take it away. This could also refer to a person. For example, you might remove a person from a list, or you might remove a person from the world, which would be very unfortunate. To eliminate them. Okay, here's an example sentence."Thank goodness Jonah was eliminated from the inquiry, he could never have stolen from that poor old lady. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time." All right, that was our five for today. Let's recap. We had the noun protagonist, the main character in a story or a play. We had the noun tendency. If you have a tendency, then you're more likely to do what you have a tendency for. Then we had the idiom larger than life, which means a person who attracts a lot of attention because they're exciting or interesting. We had the adjective perpetual, which is continuing forever or happening all the time. And we had the verb eliminate, to remove or take away someone or something. Let's work on our pronunciation. Please repeat after me. Protagonist. Tendency. Larger than life. Perpetual. Eliminate. Great. Let's bring it all together in a little story. Football players, I guess we could say they're like the protagonists in a sports story. Many fans, especially children, look at their favourite players who are often larger than life characters and want to be just like them. It's one thing trying to play like your idol, but when you want to dress like them too, it's not cheap. Have you ever bought a football kit for your children? They can't just have the one; they have to have the home kit, the away kit, and the alternate kit! You're looking at around£100 per kit, and that's just the top and shorts, times 3! You need a footballer's salary just to pay for it! Professional football players play the game with great skill and teamwork. Though some have a tendency to lose their temper and foul their competitors on occasion. Some of the techniques players try to perfect are the dribble, the header, the scissor kick, the Maradona Turn all skills that are used to get the ball out of what could be a tricky situation and into the goal. Footballers have perpetual energy, always running and moving on the field with excitement and a determination to win. The main goal for football players is to eliminate the other team's chances of scoring by blocking, tackling, and keeping possession, passing the ball to their teammates. Many players ask why these sportsmen are paid such massive salaries when all they do is kick a ball around the field. It's a question I sometimes ask myself and one I'm not sure we'll ever know the answer to. But, I think I might sign my son up to our local team, I can picture him as a football star in the future... looking after me, his elderly mother, with his six-figure salary. That would be nice. Okay, that ends today's episode. I do hope you found it useful. Until next time, take very good care and goodbye.