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Sports in General

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Sports is a common topic mostly among the guys. In America, the three biggest sports are baseball, basketball, and American football. Due to the popularity of these sports, I will have individual lessons for them, but I will not have individual lessons for other sports such as soccer, volleyball, etc. For this lesson however, I will briefly talk about most sports and the most common language used among each one.

First, let's practice general sports sentences:

"What do you like to do in your free time?"
"What are your hobbies?"
"What sports do you like to play?"

"I like to play sports. It's good for my health and I think it's very fun."
"I like competitive sports because winning feels good."
"I like to play tennis and I like to swim."

"Jeff is pretty athletic so he picks up on sports real quick."
"If you need a girl to play, you should get Jessica. She's very athletic."

In English, you can mostly use the word play for a sport, but there are some sports where play doesn't work. Here are some examples:

"I like to play basketball."
"Let's go play basketball."
"Do you like to play basketball?"

This would also work for football, baseball, tennis, volleyball, soccer, and softball.
However, sports such as swimming, bowling, and golf do not use the word play. Here is how you would say it.

"I like to swim."
"I like swimming."
"Let's go swimming."
"Do you like swimming?"

As you may have noticed, each of the sports that do not use play is the ones with an 'ing' at the end. So if the sport is primarily used with an 'ing' at the end, then do not use play with that sport name.

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