Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast.
Hey English learners, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 246 of the Listening Time Podcast.
I hope you're doing well and that you're motivated and excited to practice your English listening with this episode.
Today, I'm going to talk about competition.
So people might think positively or negatively about this topic, about competition.
It just depends on your perspective.
And I want to talk about this, and I want to talk about competition, some different areas of life, some different domains in which competition can play a role, meaning it can have an effect, it can be part of those different areas, and I'll talk about those effects and about the positives and negatives associated with this idea of competition.
So I'm sure this will be an interesting topic to talk about, and I want to challenge you to start using my advanced podcast episodes if these normal episodes have become more comfortable for you.
That means you need to start practicing with content that is faster, so you can start to understand native speakers when they speak at normal speed.
So that link to sign up for those is down below in the description.
And you can also check out my US Conversations podcast there to practice listening to my conversations that I have with other English teachers.
It's great practice for your listening and you can find an English teacher there.
Many listeners of mine have already found a teacher using that resource and they take classes and practice their English with those teachers.
So check that out as well.
That link is down below.
Okay, let me talk about competition.
First, let me talk about competition in sports.
This is maybe one of the first things that comes to mind when we think about competition.
So the whole point of playing a sport is to compete.
Even if you're playing for fun, you might say I'm not competitive, I just play tennis for fun, or I play golf for fun, or I play soccer for fun.
Even if it is for fun, the whole point of the sport is to be better than your opponent.
Or if it's like golf, where you're playing alone, perhaps you play against other people in a way in golf because you're trying to get a lower score than them.
But even if you're playing by yourself When you play golf, you're kind of competing with yourself.
You're trying to be better than you were last time.
So you can't really take competition out of sports, because this is like the whole point of playing a sport is so that you can try to beat your opponent Or be better than you were last time.
So even if it's for fun, there's a lot of competition in sports.
And this is good because it pushes athletes to get better, to improve, prove to be better than their opponent.
And, of course, it's more fun to watch these events because of the competition.
We want to see people compete.
People love watching the olympics.
Even people who aren't huge sports fans often watch the olympics because They want to see athletes from around the world compete.
It's exciting, right?
And teams that have these athletes.
They will spend a lot of money and dedicate a lot of resources towards getting the best athletes and training those athletes, and And so competition pushes people to get better at their sport.
It pushes teams to spend more money.
It pushes spectators to watch these sports and follow these sports.
And most of that can be somewhat positive.
But there is also a negative side to the competition in sports, because so much competition can cause a lot of intensity as a result.
It's really intense when you go to a sporting match.
There's a lot of tension and excitement, and sometimes this can be good, but this intensity can also cause some negative emotions.
I'm sure maybe even some of you or maybe you know people like this who are are so attached to their favorite sports team that whenever that team loses, the person gets depressed or really angry, and of course, that's not great.
All right, we don't want to be depressed because a team lost right and in terms of the people watching the game at the stadium, They can sometimes get into fights with the fans of the other team because of the competition and all of the intense emotions.
And I know in some countries there are certain sporting events where they have to separate the fans of the different teams because if not there would be tons of fighting.
And I don't think that's good.
And even players the players who are competing.
They can get into fights because of how intense everything is getting.
So of course, when competition gets really intense in sports there can be some negative points, but I think overall most people like this intense competition.
And besides sports, I also thought about board games.
You might not be a big board game fan, but I love board games and I'm really competitive when I play board games.
My family was always like this.
I grew up in a competitive family when we played board games particularly, and it made it super fun because we were competing with each other.
We were trying to win and beat the other people or the other team.
It added a fun intensity to these board games.
And even today, as an adult, when I play board games, I get really into them.
I get animated.
I yell, I laugh, I stand up.
I get really into the game.
I'm very competitive.
And when the other people playing are also competitive, it's really fun because we get really excited about things.
The game can get tense in a good way.
Maybe it's really fun.
If you're like me, you know what i'm talking about.
However, I know that many of you are probably not like me in this regard and you hate this.
You hate when people get really competitive when playing board games, and I have experience with this.
I've played board games with people who are not big board game players, and these are usually the people that don't like this super competitive aspect of board games.
Usually it's too intense for them or...
They kind of take things personally sometimes like, oh, why did you attack me in this game?
Like I've dealt with that before and fights sometimes start because of board games.
And if people aren't really competitive, they might not be able to have fun with playing with other people who are competitive.
A lot of negative feelings can arise.
So this is something I need to be aware of.
And when I play board games with other people, I ask them beforehand.
Like, are you competitive?
Do you take things personally?
I honestly need to know this, because if I don't, and then we start playing and I realize that they're getting offended or whatever, this is not good.
So I typically like to play board games with people who are also competitive.
And even though things get intense, it's all in fun.
We like this competition.
So that's something I wanted to mention because I like board games.
Another area in which there is a lot of competition is in the market.
What I am referring to here is buying and selling things.
And let me be honest with you.
I'm a free market guy in general.
I don't talk politics on my podcast.
I don't talk about controversial things usually.
But I'll just be honest with you in terms of my economic views.
I'm more of a free market guy in general.
I like free markets.
I like all of the benefits of this.
And you might not think like I do.
You might not agree with me 100%.
And that's perfectly okay.
But I just have to make that clear because I'm going to talk about the value of of having competition in the market, because I love how competition drives innovation.
When I say it drives innovation, I'm saying it causes this to happen.
It pushes this.
So innovation typically happens because people are competing with other people.
They're trying to make a better product, a better service.
They're trying to find a better solution.
Competition often drives innovation.
And so a lot of the advancements that we get in the markets today are due to that competition.
And that's typically good.
And improved efficiency is another benefit.
Of course, when a company is competing with another company for the same customers or clients, they want to be efficient, more efficient than their competition, because customers want efficiency.
We don't want bureaucracy and slow service and obstacles and these types of things.
We want efficiency.
And so competition often drives efficiency and makes things faster easier and, of course, it can lead to better products, because companies are trying to put out a better product than their competition, or a better service.
Maybe it's not a product that they're selling, Maybe it's a service, and they want to give a better service than their competition.
That's very typical.
And another thing is that they might have to lower their prices to be lower than the prices of their competition.
And that's great.
I love when competition results in lower prices because that's good for me, the customer.
And, in general, companies try to offer something better online, cheaper or whatever than other companies, and so I know those of you who are not as free market oriented as me.
You might come up with some negatives, and I understand.
I just wanted to talk about some of the things that I like about a free market and and the benefits that I see as a customer.
But of course, there are always downsides and drawbacks to everything.
So I'm not saying that it's all perfect.
And then now let me talk about language learning.
As usual, I try to tie in language learning when I talk about different topics.
So let me focus on this for the rest of the episode, competition in language learning.
So when you learn a language, it's very normal to compare yourself to other learners of that language.
This is human nature.
We can't really avoid this 100%.
Even if you try not to compare yourself, I think it's inevitable that when you hear other people who are learning the language that you're learning, when you hear them speak the language, it's hard not to focus on The language itself and it's hard to avoid evaluating their level and comparing yourself to them.
That's human nature.
Right.
And this can be good, because it might drive you to be better when you hear another learner who is at a higher level than you.
You hear them speak and you say, oh, that person is more advanced than me.
I want to reach that level.
I think that this type of competition is good.
It is like a positive motivator.
Of course, comparison can be negative in many instances, but when you're using it to try to better yourself or improve your skills, this can be a positive.
Friendly motivation can really motivate you I feel this.
So when I hear other people speak the language that we are both learning and they are speaking really well it motivates me to do more studying to improve my pronunciation more, to Learn more words, or whatever.
I'm a competitive person in general and this is one of the positive effects of this is I can use other people's success to motivate me.
And don't get me wrong.
I'm not trying to hate on other people and try to just think that I'm better than them.
They're not good.
No, I'm happy for their success in that language, but I'm not satisfied with with my own level.
When I see their level,
And so I want to reach their level or surpass them.
And I'm not saying that we always need to try to be better than the other person, even if it's like a positive motivation.
Like we shouldn't think that we need to be the best at everything.
That's just not reality.
It's probably unhealthy, except for those few athletes that just want to be the greatest in the world at their sport.
Okay, I'll make an exception there, but in general, I think that It's good to admit that we're not the best at a particular thing, but it's good to use other people's success to motivate you to succeed yourself.
And this is true in language learning.
I view other language learners and I get motivated by how well they're doing.
But there is a negative side to the competition that occurs in the language learning world, because people often go too far and they start insulting language other learners of that language to make themselves feel better.
And when I say this, I'm talking about online comments usually.
In real life people aren't so quick to insult other people, but online comments Many people are more than happy to insult others.
And I've talked about this with students before how, in certain cultures, certain countries, it might feel like you need to be better than the other people learning English because it's essential for you and your career, your academic or professional career.
And that leads to people insulting other people's English level.
And that's not good, right?
We want to use competition as healthy motivation.
But if you're doing this in an unhealthy way and you're trying to put other people down so that you feel better or look better, that's wrong.
There's nothing good about that.
There's nothing wrong with competing when learning a language if it's in a friendly way and it's helping you and you're not putting other people down.
But it is wrong if you're taking it too far and you're using it to bring other people down.
So that's what we want to avoid.
And I think that we need to have a balance here.
I think it's good to compare ourselves with others in a way so that we can see how we're doing, maybe get inspired by other people and have some friendly competition sometimes, and and maybe get advice from other language learners and maybe develop a community with other people and motivate each other a little bit by pushing each other to get better at the language, with a little bit of friendly competition.
That's great, but we want to avoid the negative consequences of being too competitive and wanting to be better than everyone else, because that can lead to unhealthy behavior, unhealthy thinking and it can be bad in general.
So, in short, I think that competition has its place in the language learning sphere, but we need to make sure it's healthy competition.
All right, I hope that you enjoyed this episode and that it was good practice for your listening.
Remember to start using my advanced podcast episodes if you want to start understanding native speakers when they speak fast.
So the link to sign up is down below.
And also check out my US Conversations podcast, especially if you need an English teacher and you don't know where to look.
You can get to know a lot of different English teachers through that podcast and decide who you want to take a class with.
And of course, it's great practice for your listening.
So that link is also down below.
Alright, thank you all for listening to this episode and I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
