Talking about extreme sports

Introduction Beth and Neil have a real conversation in easy English about extreme sports – the activities that get your heart racing. Learn to talk about risks, adrenaline and being adventurous. Vocabulary extreme sports sports that are dangerous but that some people find exciting risk chance that something bad could happen risky having a high chance of danger or misfortune adrenaline hormone produced by the body when we are frightened, excited or stressed adventurous happy to do exciting or dangerous things Transcript Beth Hello and welcome to Real Easy English. We're back with another conversation in easy English to help you learn. I'm Beth.   Neil And I'm Neil. Don't forget, there's a video version of this podcast on our website, where you can find subtitles to read along. That's at bbclearningenglish.com.   Beth Hi, Neil. How is your day going?   Neil I'm pretty good. How are you, Beth?   Beth I'm good, thank you. Today we are talking about extreme sports. Now, these are sports that are very dangerous, but that people enjoy doing. So, an example of that is skydiving. That is an extreme sport where you jump out of a plane. Would you like to go skydiving?   Neil Absolutely not.   Beth Oh.   Neil I think when I was younger, I liked the idea of skydiving, but not now – no way.   Beth OK.   Neil Can't imagine anything worse! How about you?   Beth Well, I actually wanted to go skydiving years ago, and I tried and they cancelled it. So, I rebooked and then they cancelled it again, and I booked it for a third time and it got cancelled again. And I thought, "Something is telling me to never go skydiving," so I haven't been and I never will. But I think it sounds amazing. Like, the adrenaline that you get when you jump out of a plane, and then seeing all of the views, must be amazing.   Neil Extreme sports are risky, so there's a lot of risk. Do you like taking risks?   Beth No, not really. I don't think there's any extreme sports that actually I would like to do now. Something I definitely wouldn't want to do, because I think the risk is too much, is bungee jumping.   Neil Ah, yes. Bungee jumping. That's when you have a kind of elastic rope attached to your feet and you jump off, for example, a bridge that the bungee is attached to. And then you, kind of, bounce around at the bottom of the rope... at the bottom of the bungee line.   Beth Upside down... maybe into a river. That risk is way too much for me.   Neil Yeah, there's... You can have too much adrenaline.   Beth Yes, definitely. There's adrenaline... and then there's just pure danger.   Neil Yeah. Do you think you are adventurous?   Beth I think I'm adventurous, but not maybe in extreme sports. So, for example, years ago my friend convinced me to go shark-cage diving.   Neil Wow! Shark-cage diving?   Beth We had to get into a cage and there were great white sharks around us. They were absolutely enormous, but I wasn't scared at all. It was amazing just seeing these animals, but I think that's probably quite adventurous and it was still a bit of a risk, but it was also very safe.   Neil Hmm. I don't want to do that kind of thing.   Beth Fair enough. Are you an adventurous person?   Neil Well, it sounds like I'm not. I guess maybe I used to be more. I did try once to go skiing on the highest ski run in the world.   Beth Ooh! Where's that?   Neil In Bolivia.   Beth Wow!   Neil And it was at about five and a half thousand metres. So, it was very, very difficult to breathe. Fortunately, the ski run was shut, so me and my friend couldn't do it, which is good, because it was hard to breathe just standing. Imagine trying to ski...   Beth Yeah. OK.   Neil ...in the same situation.   Beth Well, that sounds quite adventurous. Neil Yeah. Long time ago.   Beth OK. Let's recap the vocabulary we heard during the conversation. We heard extreme sports, which are sports that are dangerous but that some people find exciting.   Neil People who enjoy extreme sports like taking risks. A risk is the chance that something bad could happen, and the adjective we use is risky.   Beth And we heard adrenaline, which is something the body produces when we are frightened or excited. Our body produces a lot of adrenaline when we do extreme sports.   Neil And we heard adventurous. If somebody is adventurous, they like doing exciting or dangerous things.   Beth That's it for this episode of Real Easy English. Why not test what you've learnt with the worksheet that you'll find on our website? Go to bbclearningenglish.com.   Neil Join us again next time for another conversation in easy English. Goodbye!   Beth Goodbye! Now try this... Watch The London Letter Challenge. Download a free worksheet. Discover more programmes for your level.  Find all our latest programmes.