VOA · Everyday Grammar
Advanced · C1learner speed5:042024-02-15public domain
Everyday Grammar digs into one grammar topic per episode — verb tenses, prepositions, sentence patterns — with plenty of spoken examples. Because you are listening to language about language, it doubles as grammar review while you train your ears.
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01Think about something that your friends or people you know like.
02Can you bring an image to your mind?
03The image that you are thinking of can serve as a starting point for today's report, the word popular.
04In today's everyday grammar, we will talk about a useful word that you can use to express all kinds of ideas about what people around you like.
05Actors, celebrations, foods, music, almost anything.
06We begin our exploration of the word popular by clarifying how it is different from the word population.
07Popular and population are closely related words and have somewhat similar spellings.
08But we should be careful not to mix up the two.
09Popular means many people know about someone or something and that they like the person or thing.
10Population simply describes a group of people.
11Another way of expressing the idea is this.
12Something might be popular within a population.
13In other words, something might be popular within a group of people.
14A recent example comes to mind.
15The Super Bowl.
16The championship game in American football is a popular event to watch in the United States.
17A lot of people know about the Super Bowl, watch it, and enjoy it.
18So, we could say the United States has a population of over 300 million people.
19We could also say the Super Bowl is one of the country's most popular sporting events.
20Another way of describing the difference between the words population and popular is in terms of grammar.
21Population is a noun.
22Popular is an adjective.
23Consider this example.
24Taylor Swift is a popular musician.
25Why is Swift popular?
26Because a large percentage of the population knows about Swift and enjoys the singer's music.
27Let's take some time to work with these ideas.
28Fill in the blank with the correct answer.
29Cricket is a blank sport in India.
30The answer is this.
31Popular.
32We can say that cricket is a popular sport in India.
33Grammar can give us a clue about the answer.
34The short word a very often marks the beginning of a noun phrase.
35If we know that sport is a noun, then the missing word is likely to be an adjective.
36Now, consider another question.
37Fill in the blank with the correct answer.
38Vietnam has a blank of around 100 million people.
39The answer is this.
40Population.
41We say that Vietnam has a population of around 100 million people.
42We can guess that population is the correct term because the statement offers the number of all the people in a group, the people who live in Vietnam.
43We begin today's lesson by asking you to imagine a person or activity that is liked or enjoyed by many people that you know.
44In other words, we asked you to imagine something that is popular in your country.
45We end by asking you to write about what you imagined.
46Write to us a short answer to the following questions.
47What is a popular person, thing, or activity in your country?
48Why do you think the person, thing, or activity is popular?
49You can write your answer in an email to learningenglish at voanews.com.
50In a future lesson, we will give feedback on some of the writing we receive.
51I'm John Russell.
// transcribed with Whisper AI — reading it is easy; catching it by ear is the skill
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