Course Level: Intermediate Time: 90 minutes Targeted skills

Task 3. Sample answer.

Well, I suppose I’ve had various hobbies as I’ve grown up, for example when I was a young girl I used to love playing soccer, but then when I was a bit older I spent more of my free time practicing karate, which I really loved, and then I got into mountain biking - but I guess my hobby has always been physical exercise in general – if you can call that a hobby, I think you can.
As I said, I’ve always been physically active in one form or another, whether it was running, swimming or one of the activities I mentioned before. So I guess I started when I was a young child, maybe around age 7 or 8 with soccer and we used to do some basic warm up exercises and running and things like that. Then when I started doing karate, the exercises were more difficult and designed to build physical strength and speed. Later I got involved with more weight training in the gym and strength training which helped improve my performance in other sports.

Obviously the amount of time I spend on exercise varies, but if I think about it – I usually go for a run at least three times a week, so that’s about two hours in total. I try to get to the gym around four times a week for around an hour each time so that’s another four hours, and at the weekend I might do something like biking or swimming with some friends for a couple of hours.So that would be around eight hours a week I suppose on average, maybe sometimes more or a little less depending on my schedule and other things that are happening.

For me personally, I love being active and doing exercise, it’s something I’ve always done, and it makes me feel good, when you’re feeling tired after exerting yourself, but it’s a good tired, it’s very satisfying, and I guess that’s why I enjoy it so much. There are other reasons too, like the challenge that exercise can offer, it’s also a great way to blow off steam if you’re feeling depressed, angry or just want to concentrate on something different for a time.