Love to watch sports? Nice. But did you know you can learn languages at the same time?
You can start by watching your game on television with comments in the language you’re learning. It has many advantages:
- When your team scores and the commentator shouts: ‘Goal, goal, goal!’, you’ll directly learn a new word.
- Sports language is a good mix of interesting background and repetitive comments: pass and corner kick will always sound the same. So you’ll start to remember quickly.
- How the commentator pronounces the name of the players shows the pronunciation of the language.
- Some news channels give live written comments. So you can watch and read at the same time.
Is the game over? Time to practice what you’ve learned during the game. Head over to a news website and read the resume. Find the words you’ve learned and try to understand the meaning of the sentences.
Reading the resume will not only repeat the new words you’ve seen. You can also learn new expressions and new words. These expressions will come back in the next games you’re going to watch. You might even see words you’ve heard during the game but couldn’t understand.
If necessary, use an online dictionary. Especially if you see expressions and words commentators often use.
When you’ve read the resume, it’s time to step up your game. Many TV channels offer a video resume on their website. Watch it after the game. The commentator will explain in a few sentences what happened during the game.
These few sentences are usually at a higher level. The commentator has to squeeze all that happened in just a few lines. However, here are the advantages of watching the video:
- you already know what happened
- you can watch it again and again
- you can re-read the written resume
Of course, you don’t need to follow each step. Feel free to read resumes of games you haven’t seen. But it’s a fun way of learning a language!