Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 89 of the Listening Time Podcast.
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Alright, in today's episode, we're going to talk about some other sports.
When I say other sports, I mean sports that aren't really popular, sports that aren't in the top tier of sports around the world.
So I'm not talking about soccer or basketball or American football or anything like that.
I'm talking about some minor sports, not the major ones.
And I really like all of these sports that I'm going to talk about, so I'm happy to have this as my topic for today.
And you might have tried some of these sports, or maybe not, but I think this episode will be interesting for you.
Remember that you have the transcript available that's in the description as well.
So go down and click on that if you need it.
And your goal should be to understand everything that I'm saying eventually without using the transcript.
So listen as many times as you need until you can eventually understand every word without the transcript.
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All right, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time.
Okay, so let's talk about some other sports, some sports that aren't quite as popular as the major sports.
So let's start with bowling.
This is an activity that I actually really like.
I enjoyed bowling a lot when I was younger.
I don't do it much nowadays, but that's not because I don't like it.
I just simply don't have the time to do so.
Or maybe I do, but I decide to dedicate my time to other things.
But let's talk a little bit about bowling.
I'm sure a lot of you have tried this before.
Bowling is the sport that you play at bowling alleys, we call them.
And there are different lanes.
In each lane, you have pins, we call them, that are set up at the end of the lane.
They are standing up and then you are at the other end of the lane where you roll the bowling ball all the way down the lane to try to hit these pins.
So in today's episode, you're probably going to learn a lot of new words.
So get ready.
Get ready to repeat this episode, because I'm sure a lot of this vocabulary is completely new for you.
So you roll the bowling ball down the lane to try to hit all of these pins and knock them down.
In English, when we say that you knock something down, this just means that you hit it and it falls over.
So you try to knock these pins down as many as you can each time.
And on both sides of the lane, we have what we call the gutter.
So if your ball rolls into the gutter, This means that it will just roll down the lane and not hit any pins because it's on the side of the lane.
And so you have to avoid this gutter when you're throwing the ball, because if you roll it into the gutter, that's zero points for you.
However, for people that aren't very good at bowling or for young children, for example, What we often do is we put up what we call bumpers.
These are these little guards on the sides of each lane that prevent the ball from going into the gutter.
So if you use bumpers, then the ball won't roll into the gutter.
It will bounce off of these bumpers or these bumper pads and then it will go in the other direction.
So your ball stays in the lane and it will hit pins, usually even if you don't throw the ball very well.
So you can use bumpers if you want to make it a little bit easier for yourself.
So this is a very family friendly sport.
People take their kids to go bowling.
You can go with your friends.
You can go with your grandparents if they're healthy.
So everyone can play this sport and it's a fun sport. and a funny sport.
It's very common to laugh at people when they throw the ball poorly or they don't hit any pins or whatever.
It can be pretty funny.
So you need to be a good sport about it and not take this sport too seriously, because most people aren't very good and they're going to mess up a lot.
In English, when we say that you're a good sport about something, this means that you have a good attitude about something.
You don't complain or take it personally.
You're able to make mistakes, mess up, and still smile and have a good time.
So it's important to be a good sport when bowling, because most people aren't very good and they're going to make a lot of mistakes when they bowl.
I loved bowling as a kid.
As I mentioned, I went a lot with my family or with friends.
And at the beginning, I used bumpers when I was very young because most kids do.
But then, as I got older, I stopped using these bumpers, and so I had to get a little bit better, or if not, my ball would go in the gutter.
And so I started to get a little bit better.
And then at some point I learned how to actually throw the ball in a more professional way, because most professionals actually spin the ball when they throw it.
So they spin it from one side of the lane and then it spins towards the middle of the lane to hit the pins from the middle point.
And this usually allows you to knock down a lot of the pins.
So at some point I learned how to do this and it completely changed my bowling experience because I was able to knock down more pins.
I got higher scores and the sport became more interesting for me all of a sudden.
And so when I was a teenager, I went bowling a lot and used this new technique that I had learned, and I started to get higher scores.
And as an adult, I also went a lot during certain periods of my adult life.
For example, when I was in college in Oregon...
I went bowling a lot.
And if I'm not mistaken, I think that's when I got my highest score.
I think my high score was 227, I think.
227 points, which is a pretty high score.
If you know anything about bowling, you'll know that's pretty high.
But I never got that score again.
That was just one time.
And if I go bowling now, I'm probably not going to get anywhere near that score.
So that was a lucky score.
There was some skill, but a lot of luck, I think.
All right, let's talk about the next sport, which some people call pool and other people call billiards.
I think there are other names for this sport as well, but most people I know usually call it pool or billiards.
I'm going to call it pool.
So pool is the sport where you have balls on a table and And you have these sticks which we call cues, and you use these cues to hit the white ball into other balls to try to make those other balls fall into different pockets that are located around the table.
So I'm sure you've seen this sport before and I'm sure a lot of you have tried this sport at one time or another.
And this is another sport that I really enjoyed when I was younger, and I actually played quite often.
The only problem is that I don't have a pool table at home.
Some other people actually have one of these tables at their house, and when I go to these houses, I often spend hours playing pool there.
But I don't have one at home.
So in the past when I played pool a lot, I always had to go, find a place where there were pool tables and pay the money to play, and hopefully I had someone to go with.
So it wasn't always easy to set this up, but I really enjoyed it and I got good, kind of good, not very good, nothing like a professional, for example.
But I got a little bit better than the average person and it became a little bit funner for me.
And it's a really enjoyable game if you start to get the hang of it.
In English when we say that you get the hang of something.
This means that you start to understand how to do something.
You start to get more comfortable with some skill or some new thing that you're doing.
So once you start to get the hang of it, It's actually a really enjoyable sport.
Most people that I know that have played this and have actually learned to do it the right way.
They really enjoy it.
It's fun.
It's pretty easy.
It's a cool sport to play with friends or your family or whoever.
And this is a sport that people often play at bars.
Sometimes bars will have pool tables, or sometimes bowling alleys will have pool tables.
I've played pool at bowling alleys before.
I think a lot of them have this.
And there are specific places that have a lot of these tables where that's the main attraction.
People go to these places specifically to play pool, not for any other reason.
So there are a few different establishments where you can play this sport.
All right, now let's talk about ping pong or other people call this sport table tennis.
So ping pong is like mini tennis that you play on a small table.
So this is a sport that's kind of similar to tennis.
You have to hit the ball over the net onto the other person's side of the table and you try to always hit the ball to their side of the table.
So you can't hit it off the table.
You lose a point if you do that. and you can't hit it into the net or onto your side of the table.
You'll also lose a point in that case.
So the goal is to always return the ball to the other person's side of this little table.
So I played this a lot growing up because I grew up in a tennis family.
My family loved tennis.
I played tennis when I was growing up.
My dad started me in tennis when I was five or six years old.
So I started at a pretty young age.
And like I said, everyone in my family loved tennis.
Everyone played.
And so naturally we also liked ping pong, because usually people that like tennis, they also like ping pong and they're also pretty good at ping pong.
It's interesting because your tennis skills usually carry over into ping pong.
So it's rare to meet someone who's really good at tennis but is really bad at ping pong.
That usually doesn't happen.
You're naturally bad.
Better than the average person at ping pong when you're good at tennis.
So I played this mostly with my family growing up, because everyone in my family likes ping pong and So, for example, there's a ping pong table at my parents house, at my sister's house, at my aunt's house.
Everyone has a ping pong table and And my family gets pretty competitive with this.
So we don't just play for fun.
We usually keep track of the score and we try to beat the other person.
In English, when we say that you keep track of something, this means that you actually record something.
You don't just forget it and move on.
You actually record what is happening.
You keep track of it.
You remember it.
So we keep track of the score and try to beat the other person.
And we play pretty hard.
So families like mine, they can actually hit the ball pretty hard and it goes pretty fast.
This is something that would be hard for For someone who's never played before.
They definitely wouldn't be able to play at that speed.
So we hit the ball pretty hard and sometimes it hits the other person.
So we're pretty competitive, as you can see.
I don't really play much nowadays, but if there's a ping pong table available and someone else wants to play, I'll always play with them.
And this is one sport, I think the only sport that where I'm pretty ambidextrous.
So that word refers to someone who is good using both of their hands or both of their feet.
So I'm not very good with my left hand or my left foot in any other sport.
But for some reason, I'm pretty good at ping pong when I play left-handed.
I don't know why that is, but that's the one activity in my life where I'm almost as good left-handed as I am right-handed.
So that's just an interesting fact about this sport.
And one other sport that I wanted to talk about is foosball.
Foosball is the name that most people use here where I live, but I think other people might use a different name.
I'm not sure what the other names are.
But this is the table that's like mini soccer, where you have the little players that are on these poles and you turn these poles, you spin them to kick this little soccer ball, which is a very small little ball.
And you try to hit it past the other person's little players into their goal.
So it's basically mini soccer that you play on this table using these poles and these little figures.
So I used to have a foosball table at home.
So I played it a lot as a kid and naturally I got a little bit better at because I had this table at home so I was able to actually improve some.
But if I ever played against someone that was really good at foosball, I would definitely lose.
So it's not something that I got really good at, but it was fun for me.
And it's a game that you can play in pairs.
So for example...
I can have another person on my team and then we play against two other people.
And one person on the team controls the defending men and the other person has the attacking men.
And you have to work together to try to defend your goal and to score goals.
So it's a really fun game to play in pairs.
I think it's even funner like that than playing one-on-one.
So that's something that you can play and have fun with, especially if you're in a group of four.
And they usually have these types of tables in public places where there are other fun activities, like other arcade games or things like that.
I've played this at malls before, places like that.
And some people have these tables at their house.
So if you go to people's houses in the US, someone might have this table in their garage, for example.
And so that's a fun one.
Another easy one to play, even if you're not very good or you've never tried it before.
It's fun to just try and you can probably score some goals even by accident sometimes.
So it's not the hardest game in the world.
All right, why don't we stop there for today?
I hope this episode was interesting for you, and I hope it was good practice for your listening.
Remember that you have the transcript available in the episode description, so go down and click on that if you need it.
And if you want my advanced episodes, then become a Listening Time family member or VIP and you'll get two new advanced episodes every month.
And if you become a Listening Time VIP the highest tier you'll be able to ask me questions every week and I'll answer them in a video QA session every week.
And remember to follow me on Facebook.
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And if you like this podcast, please give it a five-star rating and a review and share it with anyone else who might find it useful.
All right.
Thank you for listening to this episode, and I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
