This episode’s vocabulary
Support apparatus
noun — equipment used by underwater divers to make diving activities possible, easier, safer and/or more comfortable.
Wetsuit
noun — a close-fitting rubber garment typically covering the entire body, worn for warmth in water sports or diving.
Steep learning curve
noun — an expression that used to describe the initial difficulty of learning something that is considered to be very challenging.
To hyperventilate
verb — to breathe too quickly or too deeply, so that you get too much oxygen and feel dizzy.
To plunge
verb — to jump or dive quickly and energetically.
To black out
phrasal verb — to experience a sudden and temporary loss of consciousness.
To turn tail
idiom — to turn around and run away, usually because you are frightened.
Trial-and-error
noun — a way of achieving an aim or solving a problem by trying a number of different methods and learning from the mistakes that you make.
Neat
adj. — cool.
Shallow
adj. — not completely certain or convincing.
Fitness level
noun — your body's ability to withstand a physical workload (how much) and to recover in a timely manner.
To be invested in smt
phrase — to be willing to work hard and give your time and energy to something; to believe strongly in something.
Casually
adv. — in a relaxed and informal way.
Buoyancy
noun — the quality of being able to float.
To sell someone on something
phrasal verb — to persuade someone that something is good, valuable, or useful.
Questions and answers
Hello our dear premium listener and welcome to speaking part 2. Rory here, an educated native speaker is going to describe a water sport he wants to learn in the future. He'll talk about what it is, what you need to do this sport, why you want to learn this sport and explain whether it is difficult or easy to learn this sport.
I've always wanted to learn how to free dive. It's this sport where you have to hold your breath for a very long time while you dive deep underwater. You have no support apparatus like scuba gear, just a wetsuit and your own lungs. I just think it looks amazing whenever I see the videos of people doing it on Facebook. And even though it seems like there is a steep learning curve, it looks totally worth the effort. In more detail about what it involves. Well, in short, I'm led to believe that you hyperventilate so your lungs and blood are saturated with oxygen. And then you plunge into the water, accompanied by a safety diver who is wearing scuba gear just in case anything goes wrong and just to see how far you can go before you almost black out from needing air before turning tail and heading back to the surface. I think people have been pretty deep doing it to the tune of dozens if not hundreds of metres. To say more about what you need to do it, the actual divers don't get much gear. Well, they don't need much gear to do this. Though, I suppose the support divers do, just to keep you safe. You'll probably need some training to do it as well, since it doesn't seem like a trial-and-error thing. You could really hurt yourself or even be killed if you can't equalise your pressure or manage your breathing properly. In greater depth about why I want to learn how to do this. I'm afraid it's not terribly deep, to be honest, I think it just looks pretty neat. I want to try and have a cool video for social media. I suppose it sounds a bit shallow, now I think about it, but it's giving me a great excuse to use to make all these water-based puns. It might be a good way to develop my fitness level, if I have some goal to reach for, though I'm not all invested in the idea to be honest with you. In terms of difficulty... the difficulty involved. Like I said, it's probably not something you can do casually and you need some training, especially to do things that scuba gear would usually do for you, like carry an oxygen supply and manage pressure and buoyancy effectively. That's not really something you can do without conscious thought. And even with scuba gear, it's still hard to do. If I don't learn how to do it, it won't be a huge disaster because, like I said, I'm not totally sold on the idea of doing it yet, but if I get the chance to try, I'd love to see if it's possible for me.
Do you think you'll do it sometime in the future?
Not in the immediate future. But maybe sometime in the distant future.