NY Giants Football

This year I had the experience of watching the World Cup across the pond in a European

country. I have always been a soccer fan, but the passion of European soccer fans is truly

something incredible to behold. The fans were passionate, boisterous, and they were not

afraid to let you know where their allegiances lie. Although this passion can come off as

strange to Americans, it is not really that different from our own national obsession with

American Football. I fall into the category of avid football fan, although I do not like fantasy

football, and you will rarely find me yelling at the television during a game or at a fan of an

opposing football team.

More specifically, I am a NY Giants fan, just like my dad. We were able to get four tickets

this past week to go to a Monday night game. Both my sister and mother also came with us to

the game. The Giants were playing the Indianapolis Colts, and because of the way the Giants

have been playing we did not expect them to win. We arrived right at the start of the game

and our seats were phenomenal. We were seated right near the field in the second row up,

right in the middle of the field. It did not take long for the Colts to open up a huge lead on the

giants, but we were still having a great time. Being able to watch a game live is so much

different than sitting back and watching a game on TV. Around the end of the 3rd quarter, we

decided to leave in order to beat the traffic out of the stadium. Usually we would stay for the

whole game, but because it was Monday and the Giants were playing poorly it was no longer

worth staying. I probably will not going to another game this season, but I will have my fingers

crossed in hopes that the Giants can make the playoffs!

Vocabulary

Across the pond – This is an idiomatic phrase which means “across the Atlantic Ocean”

Behold – To see or observe

Boisterous – Noisy, energetic

Avid – Having a strong interest

Phenomenal – Incredible

Beat the Traffic – This is an irregular/idiomatic use of the verb beat; in this case, beat means to avoid.

Vocabulary Activity – Try replacing the blank spaces using the defined vocabulary words

1. He is an _______ reader; usually, he reads at least one book every weekend.

2. We had a __________ time at the show last night.

3. The group left early in order to try to _________________.

4. I try to go ______________ at least once a year for a vacation.

5. The actress was a beauty to _________.

6. Hockey fans tend to be on the _____________ side.

Prepositions

Today’s discussion topic is prepositions. Prepositions are words or phrases that provide information about direction, location, or time. Prepositions are fairly easy to use for native speakers, but they are very difficult to understand and especially hard to teach. On a more personal note, my second language is Italian and natives tell me that my most noticeable difficulty in writing is with prepositions. It seemed like there were no hard-and-fast rules for prepositions, which is exactly how prepositions can feel in English. Within my blog entry today, all of the prepositions are italicized. Let’s look at a few examples.

We were seated right near the field in the second row up, right in the middle of the field.

In this example, the prepositions near and in the middle of both give information about direction and location. The preposition near gives provides information about where we were in relation to the field and in the middle of takes this one step by further by stating which part of the field we were near.

Around the end of the 3rd quarter, we decided to leave…

Here we can see an example of a preposition that gives information about time. If I had just said “we decided to leave” it would beg the question “when?” The preposition around would help to answer the question, implying that we did not leave right at the end of the third quarter, but around this time.

The following link contains a large list of English pronouns. Try to construct 5 sentences using 5 different pronouns from this list.  https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/prepositions-list.htm

For any foreigners which may come across this blog, the following link explains the basics of American Football. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/other_sports/american_football/3192002.stm