Improve Your English: English in Everyday Life

MAN:
I like to play
 ’em
. I don’t like to watch ’em too much, 
except for the playoff times but actually, I’m pretty ath-
letic, uh.
INTERVIEWER:
So what sports do you play?
MAN:
Basketball, football, soccer, baseball—several of 
’em, quite a few, quite a few sports.
INTERVIEWER:
Are you in leagues or 
[
do you just 
]
pick up
games or . . . ?
MAN:
I used to be, I used 
to be, I used to play, um, high school ball, uh, played 
league balls around the community, um, street teams, uh, 
quite a bit of, a lot of trophies, medals through my youth, 
real athletic. I was a 
PAL
boxing team. Uh, we train the 
children in self-defense also, which is, um, an important 
thing, try to teach them mental and physical discipline, 
so, yeah, I’m into sports. I-I like sports, yeah.

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Impr
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INTERVIEWER:_Why_MAN'>INTERVIEWER:
What was your favorite sport?
MAN:
Handball.
INTERVIEWER:
Oh yeah?
MAN:
Yeah.
INTERVIEWER:
Why?
MAN:
Oh man, what can’t I say about handball? It’s just 
a beautiful sport. It’s hand-and-eye coordination, you, it 
builds and develops refl ex, strength. It’s-it’s as good as 
swimming as far as, uh, muscle workout, you work out 
every muscle in the body. It’s just, it’s just an overall great 
sport.
INTERVIEWER:
Uh, so you say you participate more than, 
you like to participate more than you like to watch. When 
you do watch, what sports do you like to watch?
MAN:
I like to watch Ultimate Fighting Championships. 
I like basketball and-and football, and I tend to, I tend 
to watch those during playoff s and, but I will watch soc-
cer. Soccer is something that, if I’m passing it, I-I kind of 
stop ’cause you have to admire the shape that these guys 
are in. We’re talking about a fi eld that’s greater than the 
length of a football fi eld. Th
ey’re running forty-fi ve min-
utes at a time, long periods before a break—the endur-
ance involved in it is just incredible—so I like a good 
soccer game, and the fact that it’s worldwide, it’s not 
limited to any one particular region, so it crosses a lot of 
boundaries and-and it takes away, uh, a lot of the walls 
that are between people, you know, and-and it gives peo-
ple a common ground. And that’s one of the beauties of, 
beautiful things about sports, um, that it takes away the 
race barriers, it takes away a lot of the language barriers. 
It’s just down to fundamental teamwork. You know the 
language of the game, you get there, and you do it. Every-

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