Lesson Notes

Unlock In-Depth Explanations & Exclusive Takeaways with Printable Lesson Notes

Unlock Lesson Notes and Transcripts for every single lesson. Sign Up for a Free Lifetime Account and Get 7 Days of Premium Access.

Or sign up using Facebook
Already a Member?

Lesson Transcript

Welcome to EnglishClass101.com’s English in Three Minutes. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn English.
Hey everyone, I’m Alisha!
In this series, we’re going to learn some easy ways to ask and answer common questions in English. It’s really useful, and it only takes three minutes!
In this lesson, you’re going to learn how to ask someone about what sports they like.
If you’re a sports fan then you’ll know how much fun it is when you meet someone who likes that sport as much as you do, even if they don’t like your favorite team.
You may assume that you just say “What sports do you like?” Of course this is a normal way to ask this question, but there’s actually a more natural way to ask this.
In idiomatic English we use the phrase “to follow a sport” to mean “to like or be interested in a sport”. So you can ask:
“Do you follow sports?”
Or, if you think it’s likely that the other person does like sports, you can ask:
“What sports do you follow?”
You can answer either of these questions by saying:
“Yeah, I follow [and then the name of the sport].”
“Yeah, I follow soccer.”
Or you can say:
“Yeah, I like soccer.”
Or you can use the phrase “I’m a fan of~”.
“Yeah, I’m a fan of soccer.”
But what if you don’t like sports?
Again, remember what we said before about being careful not to hurt the other person’s feelings by saying anything too offensive. Just say:
“No, I don’t really follow any sports.”
Lots of people don’t like to watch sports, but do like to play sports. If this is you, then you can say:
“I don’t really follow sports, but I like playing [and then the name of the sport]”.
“I don’t really follow sports, but I like playing soccer.”
A good place to expand the conversation is if you answer “Yeah, I follow soccer” and the other person answers “me too” or something similar, to then ask about what teams they support. All you say is:
“What team do you support?”
Or, as we said in previous lessons, you can expand the conversation by asking the other person: “How about you?” once you’ve finished answering.
Now it’s time for Alisha’s Advice!
Sports are a very popular topic of conversation in the US. It’s a totally neutral, easy to talk about topic which avoids controversial themes such as politics and religion, which are not usually considered appropriate things to talk about with someone you have just met.
What sports are you into? Let us know in the comments!
In the next English in Three Minutes lesson we’ll be learning a really useful question for making conversation with native speakers and non-native speakers of English alike!

Comments

Hide