Name: Ukraine conflict continues - BBC News Review
Uploaded: 2022-02-13T16:50:08.000Z
Duration: 9 min 34 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

This is News Review from BBC Learning English.

I'm Rob and joining me to talk about the language

being used in the headlines about this story

Now, Russia is continuing to attack Ukraine

after launching a devastating attack last week.

Russian troops have taken over parts of Eastern Ukraine

and are attempting to control the... the country's capital Kyiv

but Ukrainian forces are offering strong resistance.

President Putin stands accused of shattering peace in Europe.

Yeah. Well, the situation is changing fast

but we're going to look at three words and expressions

from current news headlines that can help you understand

how the conflict is being reported in English.

What are your three words and expressions, Roy?

We have 'spiral', 'free fall' and 'rising to'.

That's 'spiral', 'free fall' and 'rising to'.

OK. Let's have a look at your first news headline please.

OK. So, our first headline comes from ReliefWeb and it reads:

That's 'spiral' — quickly become worse.

and it means to quickly become or get worse.

I've heard about this word 'spiral' in terms of a shape:

That's correct. Now, let's talk about that idea of 'spiral' as a shape.

So, it's basically circles going round and round.

Now, we talk about it in terms of a 'spiral' staircase.

So, it's a staircase that you walk down and it goes round and round and round.

And we also have notebooks that have — a 'spiral-bound' notebook —

that have these kind of metal circles that keep all of the pages together.

or as an adjective: 'spiral' staircase, 'spiral-bound' book —

but we're not talking about the shape in the headline.

We're talking about a situation and if a situation 'spirals',

it means that it is getting worse very, very quickly.

So, we can talk about prices 'spiralling',

the price of oil 'spiralling'. It's getting worse.

Yeah. I mean, we'll talk about those prices in a second,

but when we talk about a 'spiralling' situation –

for example, an argument between two people.

the argument starts off small and it just becomes incredibly big,

we can say it's 'spiralling' out of control.

Now, you talked there about prices, the price of things.

When we talk about the price of things 'spiralling',

we often mean that the price is increasing

Now, the situation is worse because things are more expensive

but the price 'spiralling', or 'spiralling' out of control,

means that it is becoming very expensive, very quickly.

Thanks for that, Roy. Let's have a summary:

Let's have a look at your second headline now please, Roy.

OK. So, our second headline is from the Telegraph and it reads:

That's 'free fall' — uncontrolled drop in value or strength.

OK. So, 'free fall' is commonly seen in dictionaries as two words:

But you will and you can see it in some cases as one word —

and it's commonly used as one word in the...

And what it means is that something is falling very, very quickly

or dropping very, very quickly without control.

A literal meaning, I guess, would be somebody with a parachute:

if they jumped out of an aeroplane with a parachute, they would drop down.

They would drop down, gravity pulling them down to the earth.

Yeah, commonly when you're talking about that,

So, they don't open their parachute and they jump and they just fall — free-fall:

When they open their parachute, they're no longer 'in free fall',

but we're not talking about the literal meaning of 'free fall' here;

we're talking, sort of, more about prices and things like this,

or in the case of the headline the economy in 'free fall'.

It is dropping... the value of something is dropping very, very quickly.

Sometimes we can say 'dropping like a stone' as well.

Yeah, commonly when you're talking about the value of something —

If... if shares on the stock market just fall very rapidly —

the value of them falls — we can say it's 'dropping like a stone'

because obviously a stone is very heavy and it drops,

but we wouldn't normally say the 'economy is dropping like a stone';

And just to clarify then, to 'free-fall':

it's kind of non-stop. It can't be stopped.

Absolutely. There's no… there's nothing that you can do to stop it,

or that's the feeling — that it's out of control.

The drop is just out of control and you can't stop it falling.

Yeah. OK. Thanks for that, Roy. Let's have a summary:

OK. Roy, can we now have a look at your third headline please?

OK. So, our third headline comes from BBC News and it reads:

'Rising to' — working hard to overcome a difficult situation.

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Ukraine conflict continues - BBC News Review

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