📕 Part 1: Sports

This episode's vocabulary

Questions and Answers

Maria: Have you ever been part of a sports team?

Rory: Not that I can remember off the top of my head. I've only ever been the team captain of a quiz team, but I think that's as close as it comes.

Maria: And why not?

Rory: Just because I'm not a very competitive person. I don't see the point in going hell for leather on a football pitch or a rugby pitch or a tennis court. It just doesn't appeal to me at all.

Maria: Do you prefer team sports or individual sports?

Rory: I don't like either because I'm not very competitive. But if I have to pick one, then individual sports just because there's less chance to mess up any coordination you might have to do or let your teammates down.

Maria: Do you like watching team games?

Rory: Not really. I don't have a competitive bone in my body. I'd rather read a book or watch a video on YouTube. When I have done it, there have been some moments when I felt slightly elated, but that's about it, to be honest.

Maria: Are team sports popular in your culture?

Rory: I would say so. We have a strong culture of having football and rugby teams, so we've got football and rugby fans as a result. And they organize different events, like Scotland has the Tartan Army for its football team. And lots of people play on different teams in various positions just as a hobby. For example, my partner plays rugby, so it's quite common.

Maria: Did you play sports as a child?

Rory: I think so. Outside of the usual things that we had in PE classes, I think I played hockey and went swimming for a bit as extracurricular activities. But I never took either of them very seriously. Some parents want their kids to be elite athletes, but mine were more well-balanced, or maybe they just wanted some childcare that was quite productive.

Maria: Will you play any sports, team sports, individual sports in the future?

Rory: Depends on how you define sport. I do yoga now, but I don't do it competitively. So I wouldn't class that as a sport. However, if we are classing it as a sport, then I will do that more in the future because I'll be a yoga teacher. But I don't see it that way. For me, it's a lifestyle choice, almost.

Discussion

Maria: Yay, thank you, Rory, for your answers. Woo.

Rory: No worries. We make a good team.

Maria: Oh yeah, dream team.

Rory: Working with Maria is my team sport. Yes.

Maria: Right, dear listener. So sports, games, sports teams. Usually when we play football, we have two teams, right? And you might say I've never been part of a sports team. I've never played any team sports, or you can say I've only been the captain of a quiz team. For example, you might have a small competition at school about words, or in a literature lesson, you have a quiz or a test. It wasn't a sport, but it was a test, a competition, a game, right? So you can also talk about that. Any team. So, I've been the captain of a quiz team.

Rory: If you are on a sports team, make sure you know what your position is. So maybe you're the captain or maybe you play in a different position. For example, if you play rugby, you could be a winger or a prop or other words I don't know the meaning of. I just hear about them.

Maria: Yeah, and you can imagine that you played football and you can say, yeah, I've played football at school and I was a defender or a winger or a goalkeeper, right? A defender. Yeah, I was a defender. I used to be on our school's hockey team, football team. You can lie, dear listener.

Rory: Is that true? Oh, I thought you were telling the truth. I was like, oh, Maria played hockey, really?

Maria: No, no, I'm good. You see, I'm good at lying. Yeah, you can say that I'm not competitive. So I don't enjoy competition, competitive. I don't like competing. So when you want to win at all costs, right? I'm not competitive. I'm not a competitive person. And I don't like competitive sports, so football, hockey. And Rory, what did you say, go hell leather? You said, I don't like...

Rory: Oh, to go hell for leather.

Maria: Hell for leather. It's an idiom.

Rory: It is, yeah. It just means as fast as possible. So if I say go hell for leather on a football pitch, it just means go as fast as possible on a football pitch.

Maria: Yeah, could you give us a sentence with it?

Rory: Well, I don't see the point on going hell for leather on a football pitch, or I had to catch a bus yesterday, so I had to go hell for leather to catch it because I was late.

Maria: Team sports don't appeal to me. You can say I don't like sports, or different kinds of sports don't appeal to me, right? It's not my thing, I don't like it. The examiner can ask you questions about team sports or individual sports. So individual sports, for example, running, jumping, when there's one person who does it, right? Swimming, freestyle swimming, diving, open water swimming, boxing is an individual sport. Really?

Rory: Well, you can't do boxing individually. I mean, you need someone to play with, to go against, I suppose. Maybe you compete for yourself, then that's fine, but it's so weird.

Maria: Wrestling, sumo, is kind of combat sports. But yeah, dear listener, swimming, diving, running, so throwing, people throw different things, like hammers and other things. And we have team sports. Football, cricket, basketball, baseball, rugby, volleyball, ice hockey, rugby again. Yeah, so these are the most popular team sports. Now you know.

Rory: Regardless of what you do, you play the sport and you have the position of something. So I play rugby as the team captain, for example.

Maria: And you can say, I'm not into sports, but if I have to pick one, if I have to choose one, then I'd go for individual sports, like diving, swimming. Teammates are people you play with. So if you play football, you play with your teammates. And if you don't do very well, you can mess something up.

Rory: Yes, you can make a mess of it.

Maria: And you can let your teammates down, a nice phrasal verb. Let somebody down. Don't let me down, so don't disappoint me. And if you, for example, don't score a goal, you let everybody down.

Rory: Is that two phrasal verbs in one sentence?

Maria: I know, look at you, bad nine. Yes, dear listener, you can use only one idiom during your speaking test, maybe one or two idioms, but phrasal verbs, mm, two, one, three, even four phrasal verbs in one answer. And they sound natural.

Rory: And they're connected to the topic.

Maria: If you don't like competition, you can say I don't really have a competitive bone in my body. So I'm not a competitive person.

Rory: Is that also an idiom?

Maria: Ooh, yeah, it's idiomatic because literally we don't have...

Rory: Bones which are competitive.

Maria: So if you want to be creative, dear listener, I don't have a competitive bone in my body.

Rory: That's a good one to know anyway, just because you can hear competitive bone, but you could have an aggressive bone or an angry bone for people who maybe struggle to manage their emotions or who don't struggle to manage their emotions.

Maria: You can say that I'd rather read a book. So instead of watching some sports on TV, I'd rather read a book. I would rather read a book or I would rather watch a film on YouTube. Okay? So I choose this, not watching team games. Or maybe you like it. So then, yeah, I really love watching team games on YouTube. When you feel elated, Rory.

Rory: You feel very happy. Like you're over the moon. But I said I feel slightly elated, which is just a way of saying I feel a bit, woo, it's good for winning, but then I go back to my normal emotions because I just don't have this competitive bone in my body.

Maria: We say that yes, there is a strong culture of football in my country, because football is popular everywhere. Football, hockey, rugby, cricket, right listener? So these are the most popular team sports. Basketball and volleyball, right? But usually football. So yeah, we have a strong culture of football. Okay? We have a lot of football fans. We have a lot of teams, right? We have our national team and a lot of amateur football players. Amateur, not professional. I'm an amateur tennis player, for example. I play tennis but not professionally. We do sports or we play sports. So you can say, I played some sports as a child, and here the examiner means some games, right? So play sports, like hockey, football. And you can say, yeah, during our physical education classes, PE classes, physical education, I played hockey or I played football. I went swimming. Okay? I went diving. Or I did yoga. Maybe you did yoga at school.

Rory: Oh, did we talk about extracurricular activities?

Maria: What are they?

Rory: Things that you do outside of school, basically. So, if you learn something when you're younger, outside of school, but it's not directly connected to your school or it's not organized by your school, then it's extracurricular. I suppose it could be organized by a teacher in the school, but usually people associate this with things like dance or gymnastics classes, they do them after school, after the regular school hours.

Maria: Yeah, and you can say during extracurricular activities, I went swimming, or I went dancing, or I played chess. They were not included in regular lessons, but they were extra. Right. So Rory, imagine that you have to choose one sport, okay? So, which sport would it be if you had to play something?

Rory: I don't know. Can you give me some choices?

Maria: Choices of sports?

Rory: Yes. Oh, I know what I would do. I would do freediving. That would be cool. Freediving is when you dive into the water without any breathing apparatus, no air tanks, and you see how deep you can go. That's quite cool. It's probably extremely dangerous, but it's cool. Or swimming, if I have to pick a more milquetoast option.

Maria: How about underwater hockey?

Rory: Oh, that's got a special name, doesn't it? Isn't it called octopush or something or aquapush?

Maria: No, it's just called underwater hockey.

Rory: What's aquapush then?

Maria: Britannica.com calls it underwater hockey. You know, we have ice hockey, the usual hockey, but you can play hockey underwater in a swimming pool.

Rory: It is. Underwater hockey is called Octopush in the United States. And there's a British Octopush association. It is not octopus, it is octopush. Maybe there's an octopus association, but we are talking about underwater hockey. I knew there was something like that.

Maria: Right, dear listener. So you can choose an interesting sport for you like underwater hockey and you can say, oh, I've never been part of a sports team, but I'd like to try out underwater hockey. And then you become interesting for the examiner, bad nine, for the ideas. So yeah, just be interesting, say something exciting.

Rory: Quality.

Maria: Thank you very much for listening. We'll get back to you in our new episode, okay? Bye.

Rory: Bye.