Listening Skills: Forest Green Rovers

Hello my name’s Jack and welcome to the Premier Skills English podcast.

If you are listening to this podcast on Apple podcasts or Spotify you can also visit the Premier Skills English website at britishcouncil.org/premierskillsenglish 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.

Today, I am quite excited because I have a really interesting interview to share with you. Through the Premier League, I got to interview Rob Mant who works for Forest Green Rovers about his job and about what makes Forest Green Rovers special. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but Rob is not an English teacher and he speaks at a natural speed and uses all the features of natural speech that can make it difficult for learners of English to understand. He’s also going to use some really interesting vocabulary so to make things easier for you to understand, I’m going to break the interview into two parts. There’s so much really useful language and some examples of natural speech that will be really helpful for you if you are trying to improve your listening skills, that I’m going to share this interview over two podcasts.

But before we get to the interview, I want to look at last week’s football phrase. If you didn’t hear it last week, here’s one more chance to guess now.

Last week’s football phrase was a **** *****. This phrase is used to describe a team or competitor in a tournament that you think has a good chance of doing very well, far better than anyone thinks they should. They are a surprise team. Now, I don't think that we expect a **** ***** to actually win, but they are a team or a competitor that has a chance that most people haven’t considered. This is a hard phrase so I’m going to give you a clue. The last word in this phrase is an animal. That should help.

So ... who got the right answer? Well, congratulations to Hayato from Japan, Daniel_06 from Mexico, Vietnguyenngo from Vietnam, HSN from Turkey, Goku from Japan, Adicon from Germany, Taher Koshen from Somalia and welcome back Taher and Isshin from Japan.

All of you managed to work out that the phrase I was looking for was a dark horse. Listen to the end of the podcast for the language challenge and a new football phrase.

Now it’s time to get back to the interview. As I said at the start, I got to interview Rob Mant who works for Forest Green Rovers about his job and about what makes Forest Green Rovers special. There’s so much really useful language and some examples of natural speech that will be really helpful for you if you are trying to improve your listening skills, that I’m going to share this interview over two podcasts.

Today, I’m going to share the first part which I’ve split in half. Before each section, I’m going to try to explain the interesting vocabulary. After you have listened to the interview, I’ll play you a few clips and talk a bit about the interesting features that you can focus on to develop your listening skills.

I’m going to present the vocabulary first this time. So before you listen to the first part of the interview, here are five items of vocabulary.

The first word I want to describe is vegan. So I think that the word vegan is the same or similar in lots of languages. Often it’s a noun and it means a person that doesn’t eat meat or animal products. So a vegetarian doesn’t eat meat, but a vegan doesn’t eat meat or any other animal products, like milk or eggs or honey. As well as the noun, the word vegan can also be used as an adjective. So you can talk about vegan food or vegan restaurants. Sometimes, there are vegan alternatives to foods that are normally made from animal products so you can buy vegan cheese. When people decide that they don’t want to eat meat or animal products, we say that they have decided to go vegan or turn vegan.

The next word from the interview is greenest. This is a superlative adjective so it means the most green. However Rob is not talking about the colour or anything like that. He means green in the environmental sense. So if something is green, it does not pollute or damage the environment. You can use the adjective in a comparative way and say that travelling by car is greener than travelling by plane. Or travelling by train is much greener than travelling by plane. And you can use the superlative form to say travelling by bike is the greenest method of transport.

The next item I want to look at is the phrase carbon neutral. Carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere when fossil fuels like oil, coal and gas are burned in power stations and in cars and other transport. Over half or all the electricity generated in the UK comes from burning fossil fuels, mainly gas. This means that almost everything we do is responsible for some carbon being released into the atmosphere. If you use solar power or wind power, you can reduce the amount of carbon your actions create. But you are still responsible for the production of some carbon.

You can offset that amount or balance your carbon output by planting trees. You can even capture carbon from the atmosphere using special machines, though that’s very expensive for now. If you can plant enough trees to capture as much carbon as you produce, your net carbon is zero and then you are carbon neutral.

Another phrase Rob uses is your carbon footprint. This is a nice metaphor. Your footprint is what you leave behind when you walk through wet sand. Your carbon footprint is the carbon you leave behind as the result of your activities. If you use lots of energy and do things like fly in planes a lot, your carbon footprint will be very large, but if you are more careful your carbon footprint will be smaller.

The last word I want to talk about before you listen to the first part of the interview is sustainable. This is an adjective that is used a lot in debates about climate change. If something is sustainable, it means that it can continue forever, or at least for a very long time. So wood is a sustainable material because we can grow more trees so we can keep making things out of wood, but other materials that are mined, that we dig out of the earth, are not sustainable because we will run out of them. Burning fossil fuels to generate electricity is not sustainable because we will eventually run out of fossil fuels and in the meantime, the carbon generated will continue to affect the temperature of the earth and that might mean there are no longer any people to run the power stations.

Listen to the first part of the interview to hear about Forest Green Rovers.

When you are listening, try to answer the following questions.

1. What league does Forest Green Rovers play in?
2. What were Forest Green Rovers awarded in 2017 by FIFA?

Today I'm talking to Robert Mant from Forest Green Rovers. Thank you for joining the podcast today. Firstly, could you please tell us what you do?

I work in the community department as well as in the academy team at Forest Green. Essentially, I'm the programs manager, helping to deliver activity such as the Premier League Primary Stars within the organisation.

You're the programme manager at Forest Green. What is Forest Green?

Forest Green Rovers is a football club. It was established in 1889 by a local church pastor, essentially trying to get people playing football within the local community.

Wow. So the club has a very long history. How’s the club doing? Is it a successful club?

We are flying high. We've just got promoted into League 1 after finishing in our highest position ever in the Football League, winning the League.

Congratulations. That’s pretty impressive. League One is the third tier in English football, but you’re still going to meet some stiff competition. Apart from promotion to League One, what's special about Forest Green Rovers?

Do you know what? That's a really interesting question, Jack. Where to start? Forest Green are the world's first vegan football club. We are the greenest football club in the world as awarded by FIFA in 2017. We are also carbon neutral, acknowledged by the United Nations, which has been fantastic.

Sorry. What do you mean carbon neutral?

So carbon neutral; we don't impact the environment in any kind of negative way in terms of our carbon footprint. So for example, we will make sure that we do things sustainably in everything that we do, from the energy that we use at the stadium, to kind of our mode of transport to games, so yeah ... we try and do things in the best way.

OK. I asked you two questions. The first was: What league does Forest Green Rovers play in? And the answer is League One after winning promotion by winning League Two. The second question was: What were Forest Green Rovers awarded in 2017 by FIFA? And the answer is: Forest Green Rovers were awarded the title of greenest football club by FIFA in 2017.

Part 2

Right. Before you listen to part two, there are some more words and phrases that I want to talk about.

The first word is consume. This is normally a formal or scientific word that means eat, but it also means use. It’s very common to talk about what we consume and our consumption when we are talking about the environment. You can reduce your consumption, this means use less. This might mean power or electricity or you might drive less. Or you might try to find foods that are grown locally so they don’t have to be transported across the world before you eat them.

The next word is fertilise. This word has two meanings. It can mean to cause an egg to start to develop into an embryo or for a seed to start to grow into a new plant, but that’s not the meaning that Rob uses. The second meaning is to spread substances on land or plants to help the plants grow better. You can describe soil that is very good for growing plants as fertile. To fertilise then, means to make the soil fertile so plants can grow well.

To irrigate is a formal scientific word that means to give water to plants. If you have plants in pots in your house, you will just water them. But if you have a professional greenhouse and build a system of pipes and sprinklers to deliver water to the plants, you will call it an irrigation system and you will use it to irrigate the plants.

Solar panels are ... well, I suspect these are also similar in other languages. They are flat boards with a special coating that converts energy from the sun to electricity. I think we need to put them on the roof of every house soon. My uncle has an array of solar panels. In fact, he was the first person I knew to invest in solar panels and they generate enough electricity that he can put some back into the national grid.

A wind turbine is a special machine that’s a tower with an enormous propellor that turns when the wind blows and generates electricity. It’s similar to an old fashioned windmill only the movement of the propeller doesn’t power a millstone. Instead it’s connected to a machine that converts the movement to electricity.

The last phrase I want to talk about before you listen to the second part of this interview is short haul and long haul flights. A short haul flight is a flight that is less than 6 hours. From the UK, flights around Europe are short haul. Long haul flights are ... well ... longer. Flights to America or the Middle East, are long haul. I used to live in Cairo which is about five hours so just about counts as short haul, but most flights from the UK to Africa would be long haul.

The word haul can also be used as a verb and it means to pull something, usually something really heavy that you can only pull or transport. Or at least, that takes a lot of force or energy to move it.

Now you are ready to listen to the second part of the interview with Rob Mant to hear about Forest Green Rovers.

When you are listening, try to answer the following questions.

1. What does Forest Green Rovers use to fertilise their pitch?
2. How much energy do they get from their solar panels?

So FIFA awarded Forest Green Rovers the title of greenest club. What exactly does Forest Green Rovers do to be green?

We use Scottish seaweed to help fertilise the ground. We also make sure that we use rainwater, which helps to irrigate the pitch as well, so that goes into the water tanker which goes along for match days and during the week. We used to have an electric robot which used to go onto the pitch but we found a more sustainable method of using that so we actually do things a little bit differently. All weeds are pulled out by the by the groundsman using his own hands, for example, which is time-consuming, but I tell you what, it's a brilliant pitch and we were awarded not last year, but the year before, pitch of the season, which was fantastic and hopefully, I've heard from the groundsman he wants to get that again for League One this time which would be awesome.

That’s fantastic. I like the sound of your groundsman taking care of the pitch by hand, though I hope he’s got a lawn mower to cut the grass now your robot has found a better job. So you’ve got a green pitch, but that’s not all you do, I guess?

We're also a vegan football club. So in terms of the food that we offer, we only serve vegan food and drinks products at the ground. That goes for the players when they're wearing the match kit and at training and also for the match days for our hands as well, which is brilliant. I can't recommend it enough, so corn nuggets and chips with curry sauce or gravy ... Up to you, your choice, but 100% for me.

They sound very good. I love Indonesian corn fritters or bakwan jagung so corn nuggets sound great. What about power? Do you have solar panels?

With the current Stadium on the south stand we have solar panels across the roof that energy does go back to provide 20% of the energy which is needed for the stadium per week for example we also have a wind turbine the first one built by ecotricity which is over 25 years now been with a 25 years now so that one essentially also helped power Nailsworth also the football CDs stadium for ecotricity which is Dale, ... which is the owners other business, which is brilliant.

That’s useful. I’d never thought about how long a wind turbine lasts. 25 years is impressive.

One thing we also have quite new this season is we have our LED boards which are the first of their kind to be battery powered by solar panels.

Ah right. So they can charge up when the sun’s shining?

Yeah, they charge themselves up and then we send messages out, for example on the side of the pitch which also read things such as how much CO2 has been put into the atmosphere due to the number of short haul or long haul flights which have taken place or it might be talking about handing it how many animals have been unfortunately consumed or slaughtered in the sense of eating meat. So yeah we try and ... We have a little message of: waste less, use less, and source more sustainably. It's a kind of message that we go on. So we try and educate our fans on those bits as well.

OK. I asked you two questions. The first was: What does Forest Green Rovers use to fertilise their pitch? And the answer is Scottish seaweed. The second question was: How much energy do they get from their solar panels? Rob told us that they get 20% of their energy from their solar panels and that the rest is generated by a wind turbine.

Focus on listening skills

Now, it’s time to focus on listening skills. As Rob speaks completely natrurally and not like an English teacher, this is a really great opportunity to focus on some elements of contracted speech that make English ... well, difficult.

I’ve got five clips to play for you and I want you to listen carefully to the contracted speech so you can hear how it s ounds.

In the first clip, Rob says “Forest Green Rovers is a football club. It was established in 1889 by a local church pastor”. Listen carefully to how Rob pronounces the verb to be.

Forest Green Rovers is a football club. It was established in 1889 by a local church pastor

The z sound at the end of Rovers is just repeated slightly. You can hardly hear is a at all.

Forest Green Rovers is a football club. It was established in 1889 by a local church pastor

It was established connects together. This happens when a word starts with a vowel sound. The consonant sound from the word that comes before connects to the vowel sound. The phrase not at all sounds more like no ta tall in regular speech because of this type of linking.

In this next extract, Rob uses three phrases. The first is a discourse marker that we use to try to draw attention to something we want to say, the second is a response to my question and the third is a discourse marker that emphasizes that it’s a complicated question. Rob says: Do you know what? That's a really interesting question, Jack. Where to start?

Listen to how he says, do you know what?

Do you know what? That's a really interesting question, Jack. Where to start?

‘Do you’ in questions is very common and it’s almost always contracted to /djə/ or /ʤə/.

Listen again to that first question:

Do you know what?

In this next extract, Rob uses the phrase used to. This is really interesting because he uses the phrase twice in on sentence. In the first instance, he’s emphasizes the used to because he’s stressing that that it’s not true now. In the second use, he’s using the phrase to express a habitual action in the past. It’s not emphasised so it’s much more contracted.

We used to have an electric robot which used to go onto the pitch

Can you hear the difference between the two uses? The second use is much harder to hear.

We used to have an electric robot which used to go onto the pitch

The next extract features a really nice discourse marker which is used in spoken English for emphasis. It’s a way of highlighting what we say. The phrase is: I tell you what. You might say this before you share a new idea or something that you think is important. Listen to how Rob says it.

but I tell you what, it's a brilliant pitch

The last extract I want you to listen to again was from the end of this part of the interview. Rob says that the groundsman wants to get ‘Pitch of the season’ again and then he says: which would be awesome. The words ‘would be’ are highly contracted and hard to hear so listen closely.

he wants to get that again for League One this time which would be awesome.

Which would be awesome.

I hope that this short focus on the contractions and features of natural spoken English is useful. If you want more practice listening for these sorts of features, you can find the transcript for the interview on the page for this podcast. You can listen and read at the same time and focus on auxiliary verbs and prepositions as these words are commonly contracted and difficult to hear.

Language challenge

Right, now it’s time for you to think about some of the language from the interview again.

Here are 6 sentences with gaps in them and you have to complete the gaps with the words and phrases from this podcast.

1. Lewis Hamilton went ______ in 2017 for environmental reasons and to help with his training.
2. Engineers has created world’s first _______-________ cement out of algae that absorbs as much _______ when it grows as is generated when the cement is produced.
3. The best way to reduce your _______ ________ is to consume local and seasonal products and limit your meat consumption, especially beef.
4. _________ energy includes all renewable energy sources, such as hydroelectricity, biomass, geothermal, wind, wave, tidal and solar energies.
5. The best time to _________ your houseplants is when spring is just around the corner.
6. The South West of England is leading the way with 378 installations of _______ ______ per 10,000 households.

Leave your answers in the comments section on the Premier Skills English website and I will go through them next week.

Football phrase

Now it’s time for this week’s football phrase.

This week’s phrase is ***** *** *******. This is not really a football phrase, but we did describe it in the Premier Vocabulary section and it’s related, well slightly, to today’s topic. The phrase means feeling a bit unwell. Not really sick, just a bit tired and run down, perhaps with a cough or cold, but not very sick. If you are ***** *** *******, you will probably not visit a doctor, but you may take things easy and stay in bed.

If you know the phrase I’m looking for, please leave it in the comments section on the page for this podcast on the Premier Skills English website.

Very quickly, here are the answers to last week’s language challenge.

Number 1: The new pictures from the James Webb Space telescope are truly astonishing.
Number 2: After lengthy negotiations, the two directors signed a deal that will save both their companies a lot of money in the long run.
Number 3: The new season will get underway on the 5 th of August when Crystal Palace host Arsenal.
Number 4: When Cristiano Ronaldo returned to Manchester United, he set very high standards at training sessions.
Number 5: The new player was excited about his debut, but the sight and sound of the crowd slightly dampened his nerve.
Number 6: Ryan Giggs won the most Premier League winner’s medals when he played for Manchester United. He won 13.
Number 7: The manager was determined to find a new striker before the transfer window closed.

That’s all I have time for today. Listen out for the second half of my interview with Rob from Forest Green Rovers.

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.