Hello and welcome to Real Easy English, the podcast where we have real conversations in easy English to help you learn.
I'm Neil.
And I'm Georgie.
You can find a video version of this podcast with subtitles to help you learn over on our website bbclearningenglishcom.
Hi, Georgie.
How are you?
I'm very well, thank you.
How are you?
I'm good, yes.
We're talking today about sport and playing sport.
Do you play sport?
I used to play a lot of sport at school.
I'm not in any team sports at the moment, but I do enjoy playing sports in a casual way.
So, you know, at a picnic in the park, for example, if someone gets a bat and a ball or a frisbee.
I love doing things like that just for fun.
What about you?
Yeah, I love sport.
I played lots of sport when I was younger.
Football, cricket, hockey, basketball, tennis.
And now my son plays lots of sports.
So sport is a big part of my life.
Does your son mostly play team sports?
Yeah, he does.
And he really enjoys it.
What do you think are some good things about playing team sports?
I think playing team sports is really good for you, especially for kids.
Because they learn about teamwork, about personal responsibility, trying to do your best.
You keep fit and you learn valuable life skills like how to lose, how to win.
Yes.
And how to deal with those emotions.
Yeah.
How to control your emotions.
And work in a team.
Teamwork is very important when playing team sports, obviously.
What about individual sports?
What's good about that?
So I think in individual sports you don't maybe you don't feel the same pressure because I
You're playing for yourself.
And if you let someone down, that person is yourself.
But then I guess probably there's added pressure because of that sometimes.
So I think if you play tennis.
It must be very lonely because you don't have a team, and when things are down, only you can help yourself.
Yeah, I think I prefer playing team sports because for me, the enjoyment comes from being with people and the community and things like that.
Individual sports, like you said, are a bit lonely.
Yeah.
Have you ever entered a competition in sport?
I have actually.
When I was at school, I was actually the fastest runner.
Yes.
So I entered an athletics competition to do some sprinting.
So sprinting is really fast running.
I didn't do so well.
It turns out that at school I was really good.
But when I was competing with lots of other people, I wasn't so good.
What about you?
Yeah, I played team sports in league and cup competitions.
So every time you play...
You can go up or down in the league.
So there was that competition all the time.
And what do you think is important when you start playing a sport?
It's important that you enjoy it mainly.
That's the most important thing, I think, because if you don't enjoy it, there's no point.
Mm hmm.
I think you need to understand that you will learn skills.
And if you practice and try hard, you will probably get better.
Yeah.
Not don't put too much pressure on yourself, I think is good.
Good advice.
Yeah.
Let's recap the vocabulary we've heard in today's podcast, starting with teamwork.
Teamwork is how we describe working together with other people.
If you are competitive, it means you really want to win at something and will try really hard to do that.
We also heard pressure.
Pressure is that feeling that you need to win and it can be quite a stressful feeling.
And you might feel a lot of pressure in a tournament when you need to reach the next level.
And a tournament is a sports competition where you play against a lot of other teams or people to find out who is best.
That's it for this episode of Real Easy English.
Don't forget to go to our website to find a free worksheet.
That's at bbclearningenglish.com.
And we'll be back next week with another conversation in Easy English.
Goodbye for now.
Goodbye.
