Entertainment

Lyrics: Viva la Vida

Listening 5 min Lyrics Intermediate

Vocabulary - 15 contextual words

Pronunciation - British

Improve your listening and writing skills by filling in the blanks in the song lyrics. These activities are designed for Beginners and Intermediates to learn new vocabulary related to a specific topic in a quick and fun way.

Our proposal today is the lively song Viva la Vida by Coldplay. Despite its happy sound, this song is about the French Revolution and King Louis XVI’s last speech in which he apologizes to his people, accepting his fate before his execution. The title, in Spanish, means “(Long) Live Life“, turning the typical salute to new monarchs, Long Live the King (Viva el Rey), into a call for everyone to live a long life!

Exercise

Fill in the missing words: Saint – ringing – morning – Jerusalem – dice – explain – reason – puppet – drums – wicked – choirs – held – sword – castles – crowd. ⇩

This activity is case sensitive so make sure to use capital letters when needed.

Grammar

Used to/would

We use would or used to to describe actions in the past that are not happening now.

We can sometimes use either would or used to, but there are differences also.

We use used to to refer to actions or situations that happened for a continuous time in the past.

We use would for actions which occurred often in the past, but only for a moment or were over quickly:

I used to live in Michigan.
Carlos used to work for a software company.
Ellen and Paige used to be best friends.

I would shovel snow every winter when I was living in Michigan.
Carlos would drive twenty miles to work every day when he was working for that software company.
Ellen and Paige would call each other every night; they were best friends back then.

We see that actions with a long, steady duration (to live in a place, to work for a business, to be in a relationship, etc.) accept used to.

Actions which happened often in the past but did not last a long time accept would (to shovel snow, to drive to work, to call someone, etc.).

Some sentences accept either would or used to:
I would play football every Friday and I used to play football every Friday are both correct, because we do not need to specify the duration of the action.

Related Course Units