Language of the Olympic Games, Part 2

Language of the Olympic Games, Part 2

In a recent Everyday Grammar lesson, we explored some language used to talk about the Olympic Games – the words host, compete, and expect. We invited listeners to answer our report with their own writing about the Olympics using those words.

Many VOA Learning English fans sent messages. Today, we will give feedback on two of the messages that we received.

Fernando’s message

Let’s begin with a message written to us by Fernando from Columbia.

Here is part of what he wrote. Please note: “that time” refers to the Tokyo Olympics, scheduled for 2020 but held in 2021.

...By that time Paris, the France's capital was announced to be hosting the competitors to the 2024 (Olympic) games.

During the competition in Paris people around the world expect to watch a great competition where it will be broken many records; competitors will expect to be well hosted, and Paris expect to be the best host.

Fernando’s message is clear and understandable, but we have a few suggestions that might help improve the writing.

In the first sentence, remove the article “the.” Instead of saying “Paris, the France’s capital,” we say “Paris, France’s capital.” We do not need the article because the possessive, “France’s,” already gives us the exactness we need to know about what is being talked about. We might also say “Paris, the capital of France,” or simply “Paris, France.”

Overall, the first sentence has a passive structure. It might be better to change the sentence to the active voice. The active voice will make the sentence’s meaning clearer. So, we might say this:

“By that time, the International Olympic Committee had announced that Paris, France, would host the 2024 Olympic Games.”

Our first suggestion for Fernando’s second sentence involves articles. Instead of saying, “expect to watch a great competition,” we might remove the article “a” and say “expect to watch great competitions.” This makes more sense because the Olympics includes many different sports events.

We might also remove the pronoun “it” and slightly change the word order to something like this:

During the Olympic Games, people around the world expect to watch great competitions where many records will be broken.

Eleni’s message

Now let’s turn to part of a message from Eleni. Eleni is from Greece. She wrote to us about the creation of the Olympic Games.

The first Olympic Games were held in Greece every four years since 776 BC.

The host town was the ancient Olympia. The Olympic Games were dedicated to Zeus, the Supreme God of the Greek religion.

During the Olympic Games no wars were permitted.

On arrival, all athletes swore to compete with honor and respect. There were a few completions such as foot-race, wrestling, pentathlon, horse races, pankration- a mix of boxing and wrestling and the athletes competed naked probably for complete freedom of the movement.

Each city expected its own athletes to win in the Olympic Games. When that happened they were tearing down a part of the city walls to honor him. It meant that the city was protected by such great athletes...

Eleni’s message was excellent. We have a few suggestions, beginning with the words “On arrival...”

We suggest creating an introductory clause and changing some of the wording to make the sentence clearer in meaning. We could rewrite it this way:

“When athletes arrived at Olympia, they swore to compete with honor and respect.”

We also suggest checking the spelling of a few words – “completion” should be replaced with competition, for example. And, we think adding punctuation, such as commas, might help make the message clearer.

Our final suggestion is for the second-to-last sentence. Eleni uses the pronoun “they.” But, who “they” are is not clear. Does “they” describe city officials, townspeople, fellow athletes?

We might also use a different verb form – “tore down” instead of “were tearing down,” as in this example:

When a city’s athlete won a competition, the townspeople tore down part of the city walls to honor him.

Closing thoughts

All of the messages we received were excellent.

In terms of grammar, our main feedback is to pay careful attention to articles, to use active voice more often, and to clarify pronouns. That is, make sure that the pronoun very clearly refers to an exact noun.

We hope that all of you get to enjoy the Olympic Games. And we thank all our listeners who sent us messages about the international event.

I'm John Russell.

John Russell wrote this lesson for VOA Learning English.

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Words in This Story

feedback -n. helpful suggestions or advice for improvement

refer -- v. to have a relation or connection

passive -- adj. grammar showing that the subject of a sentence is acted on or affected by the verb

active -- adj. grammar showing that the subject of a sentence is the one doing the action expressed by the verb

pentathlon -- n. an athletic contest involving participation by each contestant in five different events