News-based English language activities from the global newspaper

March 2010
Level ≥ Lower intermediate
Style ≥ Lesson plan
Welcome to the Guardian Weekly’s special news-based materials to support learners and teachers of English.
Each month, the Guardian Weekly newspaper selects topical news articles that can be used to practise English
language skills. The materials are graded for two levels: advanced and lower intermediate. These worksheets
can be downloaded free from guardianweekly.co.uk/learningenglish/. You can also find more advice for
teachers and learners from the Guardian Weekly’s Learning English section on the site.

Standing tall brings trouble for footballers

Materials prepared by Janet Hardy-Gould

Instructions
Lesson focus: reading, roleplay
Materials sheet: copies of the article and photograph
Time: 55 minutes

1 Ask students: What will happen in South Africa this June?
Football World Cup. Who won the cup last time? Italy. Who
might win this time? Why? 3 mins
2 Go through football vocabulary from the article. Draw a
football pitch on the board. Ask a student to come to the
front. Read out the words below one by one. The class
must tell the student where to write the words on the
pitch; some words can also be illustrated. For example,
the student writes “manager” at the side of the pitch
and draws a figure on a bench. Vocabulary: manager,
footballer/player, ball, referee, team, striker, midfield
footballer, defence/defender. 8 mins
3 Put the class into pairs with dictionaries to find the
meaning of tackle and foul. They can then find three
more football-related words to add to the board. 6 mins
6 Focus students back on the photo of Peter Crouch
4 Tell students they are going to read about research
into football. It is study about referees and how they
penalise players. Explain the words in italics. Ask: Do you
know players who are often penalised? Why are these
particular players penalised? 4 mins
5 Write up these sentences. Students read the article and
decide if sentences are true or false. They must correct
the false ones. Ask students: Do you think the research
sounds true? Why/Why not? 14 mins
a [ ] When there are tackles, referees often penalise
smaller players.
b [ ] Peter Crouch might be the tallest player in the
2010 World Cup.
c [ ] The researchers studied over 100,000 European
matches.
d [ ] The researchers tested their ideas with some
football fans.
e [ ] The fans thought that the smaller footballers
would be victims.
f [ ] Steffen Giessner thinks that referees often make
slow decisions.
g [ ] Taller strikers do the most fouls.
Answers: a F smaller – taller b T c F European matches
– fouls d T e T f F slow – fast g F taller strikers – smaller
midfield players
and the referee. Ask them to look carefully at the body
language. As a class decide: where they are, what has
just happened, how Crouch feels, how the referee feels.
Ask students to write an eight-line dialogue between
the referee and Crouch including the following words:
decision, referee, tackle, foul, tall, victim, aggressor.
Brainstorm possible opening lines as a class. Students
write their dialogues in pairs. Some students act out their
dialogues to the class. 20 mins
News-based English language activities from the global newspaper
Materials sheet
Ref’s view ... England’s Peter Crouch in trouble Owen Humphreys/PA
Student tasks
1 Football vocabulary:
manager footballer/player ball referee team
striker midfield footballer defence/defender
2 Read the article and decide if these sentences are true
or false.
a When there are tackles, referees often penalise
smaller players.
b Peter Crouch might be the tallest player in the
2010 World Cup.
c The researchers studied over 100,000 European
matches.
d The researchers tested their ideas with some
football fans.
e The fans thought that the smaller footballers
would be victims.
f Steffen Giessner thinks that referees often make
slow decisions.
g Taller strikers do the most fouls.
March 2010
Article: Standing tall brings
trouble for footballers
1 As the managers of national football teams begin to
choose their players for this summer’s World Cup, most
of them won’t be listening to the ideas of social psycholo-
gists. Perhaps they should.
2 Research has shown that football referees are more likely
to penalise taller players when they tackle smaller oppo-
nents. This is bad news for England striker Peter Crouch
who at 2m in height could be the tallest footballer in the
World Cup.
3 A study of more than 100,000 fouls in domestic, Euro-
pean and international football showed some interesting
results. The bigger the height difference between the two
players then the more chance the referee will decide in
favour of the shorter one.
4 Academics from Rotterdam school of management in the
Netherlands also tested their ideas by asking football fans
to look at images of two players running towards a ball.
5 When asked which of the footballers would end up on
the ground more people thought that the smaller player
would be the victim and the taller one the aggressor.
6 “You will always get moments in a game when the situ-
ation isn’t very clear and the referee has got to make a
fast decision. This is where assumptions could influence
them,” said Steffen Giessner, one of the authors of the re-
port. “There is an effect with height, but we can’t say how
strong it is.”
7 The researchers thought that their results might be due
to taller footballers often playing in defence, where fouls
might be more common. But a closer look at their data
revealed that the largest number of fouls were done by
smaller midfield footballers against other players in the
same position.
8 There is another explanation: that taller players really are
more aggressive. The only way to decide would be to film
many matches and analyse the refereeing decisions.
Original article by Peter Walker, rewritten by Janet
Hardy-Gould