English Vocabulary: Talking about SPORTS!

In this video, you will learn important vocabulary related to sports. What’s the difference between a “nail-biter“ and a “blowout“? Which prepositions can you use after “win“ and “lose“? How do you use the verbs “beat“ and “beaten“? Become a pro at speaking about soccer/football, hockey, basketball, baseball, and more in this fun and useful lesson. TRANSCRIPT Oh, hey. Sorry, guys. Just watching the game. So I’m Alex. Thanks for clicking, and welcome to this lesson on talking about sports. So today, I’m going to look at some of the basic vocabulary that we use to talk about our favorite teams, what happened in the game yesterday... And this is useful to talk about soccer, football, hockey, baseball -- almost any team sport that you can think of and maybe some single sports as well. So today, I have a sample situation. Realistic or non-realistic, depends on what year it is, I guess. Here, we have the score of a soccer game in the English Premier League. It’s Arsenal 2, Chelsea 1. So some of the most common questions that you ask if you’ve watched the game yesterday in the past was, you know, “Who played?“ “What was the score?“ “Who won?“ So these are the three most common questions that sports fans ask about a game that just happened. So I’m going to look at some of the most common vocab to start, and then, I’ll look at some of the more specific situations. So here are five different sentences -- the five most common sentences that you use when you talk about one team defeating another team or beating another team. So if we talk about who played yesterday, you could say, “Arsenal played against Chelsea.“ So it’s -- we say “played against“; “they played against.“ You could say “with“, but it’s not as common. Normally, we say, “They played against each other“ or, “They played against one another.“ Now, here, the score is Arsenal 2, Chelsea 1. So we can say, “Arsenal won against Chelsea.“ You could also say, “Arsenal won 2-1 against Chelsea“ -- the score. And very common, “Arsenal beat Chelsea.“ So very common verb when talking about sports is “beat“. Now, on the other side, if you want to talk about the loser, we can say, “Chelsea lost against“ or, “Chelsea lost to arsenal“, okay? So, “Chelsea lost against arsenal. They lost to Arsenal.“ You can also say, “They lost 2-1.“ So you can give the sore as well. And finally, this is the passive construction. Here, we have, “Arsenal beat Chelsea.“ And in the passive sense, you can say, “Chelsea were beaten by Arsenal.“ So we don’t say “were beat“. The past participle of “beat“ is “beaten“, so you have to say, “Chelsea were beaten by Arsenal. They were beaten 2-1“. Okay? Again, no offense to Chelsea fans. I’m just an arsenal supporter, so that’s just me. Now, let’s look at some other situations that happen in sports -- team sports specifically. Here, we have some different scores, different situations. So here, we have a game where it’s Manchester United and Liverpool, and the score was 1-1. So we can say, “The game ended in a draw“ or, “The game ended in a tie.“ So these are the two words that you need to know if the score is the same. So if the score is 1-1, 2-2, 0-0, you can say, “The game ended in a draw“ or, “The game ended in a tie.“ You can also just say, “They tied“ or, “They tied 1-1.“ “They tied 2-2.“ Okay? Here, we have another situation. Arsenal 5, Everton 0. So in this situation, Arsenal won by a large difference of goals. So if one team dominates the other team on the scoreboard, we can say, “It was a blowout.“ So here, we have “blowout“. So think of the words “blow out“. So here, we can say that “Arsenal blew Everton out.“ So, “They blow them out.“ “Arsenal blew Everton out.“ And you can also use the passive where “Everton, they were blown out.“ So here, you use, “They were blown out“ in the passive construction for Everton. “They were blown out. Arsenal blew them out.“ Okay? And here, “The game was a blowout. It was not even close. It was not close.“ Now, here, we have Real Madrid 3, Barcelona 2. It sounds like a very exciting game, a close game. So if you have a close game, you can just say, “It was a close game.“ If you want to get a little bit more -- I’ll use the term “slangy“, I guess. Use a little bit more slang. You can say, “It was a nail-biter.“ So think of your nails and -- you’re watching the game. It’s so exciting. It’s so close, and you’re so nervous that you’re biting your nails. So you can say, “The game was a nail-biter. It was a close game.“ Okay?