Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • he's a review from BBC Learning English Hello and welcome to News Review The program where we show you how to use the language from the latest news stories in your everyday English.

  • Hi, I'm Neil.

  • Joining me is Dan.

  • Hi, Dan.

  • Hello, everybody.

  • What's our story today?

  • Our story is about a near extinction.

  • Okay, near extinction.

  • Let's find out some more from this BBC World Service News Bulletin The world's last meal Northern White Rhino has died in Kenya, bringing the sub species to the very brink of extinction.

  • The 45 year old rhino was in poor health and was put down on Monday.

  • His daughter and granddaughter are the only females remaining.

  • So a sub species of the rhino family the words sub species means a particular type within the main group.

  • So a sub species of the rhino family is almost extinct.

  • The last male of the species has died in Kenya at the age of 45 which is actually 100 in rhino years.

  • It means that there are only two northern white rhinos left in the world, both of thumb female.

  • Okay, well, you've been looking at this story and you've picked out three words and expressions being used in the news that we can use in our everyday English I have indeed, we have put down faces in doubt, put down faces and in doubt.

  • OK, your first headline place down.

  • Our first headline comes from the Guardian and says, Last male northern white rhino is put down.

  • Okay, put down here, meaning kill an old, ill or dangerous animal That's right.

  • Now put down is a phrase Alvar verb.

  • That means it's a main verb and accompanied by a particle, which is either a proposition or an adverb.

  • But let's not get too technical.

  • A main verb, plus a particle and like many phrase Alvar herbs put down, actually has a raft of different meanings.

  • And it all depends on the context.

  • They could be completely different, so we'll start with the most literal meaning it can.

  • Everybody see I'm holding a pencil or pen.

  • There we go.

  • I'm going to put it down, see?

  • So when you put something down literally, you release it or drop it from being carried like that.

  • Then, of course, there's the second or other meaning of put down.

  • This is more figurative and it means to make someone feel silly much like you did to me the other day.

  • Do you remember?

  • Ah, yes.

  • Oh, yeah.

  • You wrote a script very good on.

  • And I kind of criticized you in front of everyone in the office and now have criticized you in front of our wider off heads director.

  • Yes, I put you down.

  • That's right.

  • You put me down.

  • So you made me feel silly.

  • This particular meaning in this case it has very, very specific.

  • And it's related to killing animals which are either ill or dangerous.

  • In some cases, when a dog has bitten someone, the law says that the dog must be put down because it could be a danger to the public.

  • Yes, and this is a word.

  • We're only applied to animals, not people.

  • That's correct.

  • We don't put people down.

  • Let's move on, then, to our next headlines are next Headline comes from the independent and says Sudan dies.

  • World's largest male northern white rhino passes away as species faces extinction faces here, meaning has to deal with a bad situation.

  • That's correct.

  • Now, again, faces is a verb with many meanings.

  • Of course, we have our face.

  • That's a noun.

  • But faces as a verb means to stand towards something physically.

  • So you are facing May I am a singing.

  • Indeed.

  • When I was naughty at school, my teacher told me to go and face the wall for a period of time and think about what I'd done.

  • Eso.

  • If you face something, then you are looking towards it Now.

  • Generally speaking, when there's danger or when there's a problem, you are going to pay attention to it.

  • And in that way you are going to face the danger or face the problems.

  • And that would be the literal meaning of it.

  • And then more figurative sense, with more sort of abstract situations like this one.

  • This species is facing or paying attention to or in danger from extinction, and that could be a very big problem.

  • So they're trying to deal with this situation.

  • Give us some other examples of when we might use this.

  • Well, we could talk about workers who could be facing unemployment.

  • We talk about maybe a criminal could be facing or a criminal faces possible 10 year jail sentence, things like that.

  • So in this case, you face something bad.

  • It's Jen employment, extinction jail.

  • These kind of the negative.

  • Very, very, very negative.

  • And of course, there's a slight variation.

  • We can also talk about facing up to something, which means accepting that a difficult situation exists.

  • It might be that a businessman running a business it's not doing very well doesn't actually acknowledge that it's not doing very well until somebody points out to him.

  • Look, you have to look at the financial information you have to face up to the fact that the business could be in jeopardy.

  • Okay, great.

  • Let's now move on to our final headline, please.

  • Our final headline today comes from S.

  • B s news and says, World's last male Northern White Rhino dies leaving future of species in doubt in doubt, unlikely to continue or succeed?

  • That's correct.

  • Now the proposition is the key here.

  • It gives the meaning that the future is very uncertain.

  • We can talk about the future of, well, let's use the previous example.

  • I talked about a businessman and financial difficulties.

  • You could say that the future off his business is in doubt, i e.

  • We don't know if the the business will be able to continue.

  • Yeah, we could talk about perhaps, Ah, a sports person who has a bad injury.

  • We could say the footballer broke their leg and their career was in doubt.

  • Absolutely.

  • That would mean that we don't know if he's going to continue playing again in the future.

  • So if something is in doubt is uncertain in the future.

  • Okay, well, we hope that the future of news review is not in doubt.

  • I sincerely hope, but let us move on to our Facebook challenge.

  • So the question that we put on Facebook, we've been looking at Fraser verbs with put today and in this sentence, what does it mean?

  • His boss put him down after he made a bad mistake at work.

  • Doesn't mean a his boss criticised him publicly be his boss, fired him or see his boss demoted him toe a role with less responsibility.

  • What was our response?

  • Well, I'm looking at a page full of correct answers.

  • The answer, of course, is A as we really discussed, his boss criticised him publicly so well done to Philip Colangelo.

  • Well done to Samara Hassoun.

  • Well done, Huck Estes, Shimon, Junior, Yasmine, Mohsen and everybody else who got the correct question.

  • Correct?

  • Answer.

  • Excuse me.

  • OK, well, let's have a recap, please off vocabulary.

  • So our vocabulary was put down, which is kill an old, ill or dangerous animal Faces has to deal with the bad situation and in doubt, unlikely to continue or succeed.

  • If you would like to test yourself on today's vocabulary, there's a quiz you can take on our website.

  • BBC Learning english dot com There's all kinds of other videos and materials to help you improve your English.

  • Thanks for joining us and good bye Goodbye, he's review from BBC Learning English.

he's a review from BBC Learning English Hello and welcome to News Review The program where we show you how to use the language from the latest news stories in your everyday English.

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it