Sports and the verbs 'play' 'go' and 'do': Learn English with Simple English Videos

What do you want to do this weekend? We could go to the gym and do some

weight lifting. Urgh! That's too energetic.

Or we could play some golf. No, let's go bowling.

Bowling? Yeah. But you always win. That's why I like it.

We use these verbs to talk about sports in English. So we do weight lifting. We play

golf. And we go bowling. I play golf.

In this video you'll learn which verbs we use with which sports. And you'll learn the

names of lots of sports. Let's start with the verb 'play'.

In America, we play football. That's American football, Jay. The rest of

the world plays football like this. No, we call that soccer. In British English

it's football. But the ball's the wrong shape for football.

If it's a sport with a ball, we generally play it. There are exceptions, like we

go bowling. But usually we play ball sports. So we play cricket. We play tennis. And we play

snooker and pool. We often use 'play' where there's a competition,

so someone wins or loses. And of course we can play other games like

cards and chess. So we play darts, and we play scrabble. OK,

let's move on to the verb 'go'. Oooo. What's the matter? I went jogging this

morning and I hurt my back. You poor thing! Notice Jay said 'went jogging'. 'Went' is

the past tense of 'go' and 'jogging' is a gerund - a noun made from a verb by adding

'-ing'. There are lots of sports that follow this

pattern, and they're generally activities that we don't do at home.

We go out to another place to do them. So we go swimming, we go fishing, we go skiing,

we go surfing and we go skateboarding. I'm playing golf tonight. I love golf. What's

your favorite sport, Vicki? Gymnastics.

But you don't do gymnastics. No, I just like watching it on TV. So do I.

Our last verb is 'do' and we use it with newer more modern sports. We 'practice' or 'do'

them. So we do yoga, do aerobics, do pilates, do

judo and do kendo and other martial arts. We also use 'do' to talk about specific exercises.

So we do squats and we do leg lifts. I do this exercise to build my chest and arm muscles

OK, now it's your turn. You're going to see

some different sports, games and exercises. Can you say which verb we use with them?

Did you get them all? Let's review. Go horse riding. Play basketball. Do push ups

Go sailing. Play baseball. Go cycling.

Do parkour. Play rugby. Go paragliding. Play shuffleboard. Do karate. Go rafting.

Go rock climbing. Play volleyball. Go ballooning. Do tai chi.

Play rock paper scissors. So are we playing golf or are we going bowling?

We're going bowling. Hmmm. I know. We'll play rock paper scissors and

the winner chooses. So if I win, we'll play golf.

And if I win, we'll go bowling. Ready? Yeah. Rock, paper, scissors. Ha, ha!

Go and find your bowling shoes. Humph.