aubrey do you enjoy water sports i do i love water sports paddle boarding is probably
my favorite lately um but there's actually not really a water sport that i don't enjoy
totally i have always loved swimming mostly in swimming pools because i didn't grow up near
an ocean but any time my family like stayed in a hotel or we traveled and stayed in a hotel
i spent as much time as possible in the pool even by myself like i just love playing in
swimming pools um so today guys we're talking about water sports vocab for ielts and guys
um here's the thing like if you're asked about activities at the beach
or water activities or things people do near the water which is a weird like part two question
um you don't just have to talk about you know oh fishing and swimming there are so many activities
and things people do in and around the water so we are going to blow your mind today with a lot of
ideas yes exactly this is going to be really fun there are even a couple that we hadn't heard of
yeah that's what inspired this um episode actually because sarah one of our three key students
posted in our facebook group i had a brainstorm challenge every tuesday where students can think
about a speaking question and write a sample and what she wrote kind of surprised me because she
named a sport i hadn't heard of googled it does exist so crazy all right so let's talk about those
two things first so what two activities did sarah think of yeah she first talked about sunbathing
which was interesting she said this is a popular beach activity but doesn't count as a water sport
but you can definitely talk about sunbathing if you're asked about water sports you say i don't
love getting in the water but i love hanging out on the beach talking about playing in the
sand building sand castles sunbathing definitely and honestly i don't usually say sunbathing i say
laying in the sun or laying out i'll just say i'm gonna go hang out yeah totally um and that's not
as much of a popular activity today as it used to be in the past because people love cancer
more aware of skin cancer yeah so now we have to haul means carry a heavy thing we have to haul
a huge beach umbrella or a tent or something to the beach so we can be in the shade even when
we're at the beach so talking about how activities have changed is also a great filler guys
um and just remember if the question asks about water sports but you want to talk about
activities on the beach you can you just have to explain it and say honestly i don't really
like swimming i don't participate in a lot of water sports but i do love to hang out on the
beach and then talk about you know building sand castles um something that we do in america that
i wonder if it happens all over the world i think it does is we like to bury each other in the sand
um if you have kids you gotta do this it takes up so much time and it's so fun
you know you like dig a little hole and then the person lays in the sand james loves burying me
and i love it because it's so relaxing i just lay there and close my eyes and have like all
this warm sand thrown on me and onion yeah and then the weight of it like it's it feels so good
we always will do a mermaid and so we'll like oh nice seashells and then they love
it but like my son that's his favorite thing he's like i want to be a mermaid like yes yes
oh my gosh oh my gosh that is so cute i love it if you can uh share a picture of your son as
a mermaid we would love that um maybe if you find it you can put it in the blog we do stand
sculptures too the last time we were in california we made this huge humpback whale like big wow it
took all of us together working for hours like that was a project so awesome really fun i mean
that's the thing guys like you can spend hours at the beach just playing in the sand um we've
so aubrey's talked about you know sand sculptures we build sand castles i know that a couple years
ago we went to the beach with my brother and his kids and so we had three little boys with us ages
seven nine and ten and no joke they spent five hours digging holes that's it they just were
digging holes in the sand they wanted them as big and deep as possible and then tunnels to
connect the holes all you need is a shovel and a bucket and you can play at the beach all day
everyone's walking around breaking ankles right avoid the holes
okay so let's get back to water sports so we've explored some of the stuff we do on the beach
right but what about the actual water sports that we are asked about on isles what are the options
so the first one let's talk about what sarah mentioned because this was new to us what's this
yes scurfing right okay so sort of a mixture of skiing and surfing yeah she described it which
would be so smart to do on ielts if you're going to use a word like this that might be unfamiliar
to the examiner describe the sport right she said it's a surface water sport in which the
participant is towed on a surfboard behind a boat with a ski rope she described that i'm like okay
such great paraphrasing and remember guys sorry sorry aubry real fast you guys have to show your
ability to paraphrase to get a seven or higher for vocab and so again like aubry said anytime you say
a word even if like if you're not sure exactly the examiner might not know what it is explain it
paraphrase you're graded on that yes definitely so it's interesting because i first thought oh
is this you know wake boarding or wake surfing which i'm more familiar with yeah and we looked
it up it sounds like this scurfing was sort of the precursor to those it existed first where someone
would just tow a surfboard behind a boat and then people were like this is fun so they created wake
boards and they created boats that throw up a surf so you can surf right behind the boat all of which
was so fun if you haven't tried it wakeboarding is so hard i tried it for the first time last
summer and it's really hard have you tried it yes and it can be really painful i ate it once i fell
and my face hit the water and it's like hitting concrete seriously at high speeds it hurts so bad
i couldn't see for a while um so there was some a really cool slang phrase an idiom that aubrey
used there so instead of falling um if you like fall really bad it's like an aggressive fall you
know it's like a really bad fall you say i ate it that's in the past so to eat it is to fall really
badly yes it's so true and it's very appropriate for water sports so if you can you can use this
a phrasal verb which is very idiomatic so fun to be like oh i'm worried i'm gonna eat it if i do
one of these sports which would really hurt well even like the beach sports we're talking about
like beach soccer beach volleyball right these are things that are super fun that people play
all over the world you can trip and fall right and we still say like oh my gosh i was playing beach
soccer yesterday and i went to um tackle someone and i tripped over the ball and i totally ate it
i mean it works anytime you fall just say you ate it yes exactly all right but there's so many more
right so we have wake boarding weight surfing jet skiing which is a motorized craft i'm sure you see
them they're super so easy and so dangerous i feel like every time we rent them somebody
crashes one into something like a dock or another jet ski maybe we're just not really good with it
i love jet skiing that's like one of my favorite things it's so fun um and then of course scuba
diving so don't mix up scuba diving and snorkeling scuba diving is when you have
the tank on your back and you go way underwater right and snorkeling is when you have the tube
watch this on youtube and you can see us like demonstrating um is when you have the
tube and the big goggles right and you swim just below the surface to look at really cool
fish i got snorkeling a lot in mexico and some interesting places you see all these beautiful
fish but i've never been scuba diving i mean they have to be certified to do it it's kind
of a complicated process at least in the united states so i've never never gotten there maybe
there do you want to do you want to get uh scuba certified i don't think so i think i have a fear
of deep water oh really i i just there's plenty of other things i like doing you know so i'm like i
don't have to do that right if it were simple if they could just drop you in the water but where
you have to go through the certification and it's expensive or like it's very pricey yes yeah um
all right so some other things you could do on the water guys parasailing i've never done parasailing
but i really want to try it so parasailing is when you are um in like you you have a seat and
a parachute above you and you're on a long rope attached to a boat and the boat pulls out and
as the boat speeds up your parachute catches air and you float up into the air so it's like flying
that sounds so amazing to me i would love to do that i know it looks so fun when i see people
doing it out on the water i've always wanted to too someday that's on the bucket list it is
on the bucket list i also really want to try kite surfing so i live in portland oregon and
this is one of the kite surfing capitals of the world really um yeah totally there are some really
famous companies that make like the kite surfing equipment in bend oregon and maybe portland i'm
not sure but um when we go because we go stand up paddle boarding a lot in the summer and there's a
lot of parts uh along the columbia river that are really famous for kite surfing and we get to see
a lot of people doing it it's beautiful to see so aubrey what is kite surfing yeah so you're
on sort of a surfboard and you have a small sail so it's almost like a mini sailboat that you can
control on your own i've seen people doing it i agree i think it's so fun i it's so rad because
they'll like catch a wave and they manipulate the sail in such a way that it catches the air
and they literally like fly for like a while like it's not just like boo-boom right it's oh my god
it's so beautiful it's so cool i bet it's really really hard um okay a couple last ideas guys
this is a an activity that we do on the rivers here because we've talked a lot about sort of
ocean activities right maybe lake activities but here's a specific activity for rivers um tubing
aubrey do people go tubing in arizona yes the salt river is not far from our home and even
mid the middle of the summer in arizona when it's so hot yeah on the river it's quite a bit cooler
so there'll be a lot of people tubing they'll have like a cooler with drinks and everyone
connects their tubes we will do the same thing but on paddle boards because often if the river's not
very deep you're in a tube you can hit rocks yeah that's the worst so i'm like i like the paddle
board so i don't risk that i love it um yeah so tubing guys tube is short for inner tube right
just the the the inflatable donut right it's a big inner tube and you put your bum in the middle
and you just relax and yeah it is uh definitely an activity that is popular here too um people like
you have one car with you park one car at the end of the route and then everybody gets into one car
and you drive to the top of the route and you tube down the river and again you like like aubrey said
you you tie coolers to the inner tube so you have like you know cold sodas or whatever or here it's
beer and um and yeah and then you just float down the river with each other and it's so relaxing
yeah one note be sure to remember the keys of the cars oh gosh we forgot one time we're like
ready to go and nobody had the keys so we had to one of us me actually i hitchhiked with somebody
just asked for a ride and they took me up to my car because they were going anyway
oh my god the only time i've hitchhiked but they were super friendly i can't believe you hitchhiked
aubry don't do that ever again um all right guys so we have talked about so many activities that
you can do on the beach in an ocean a river a lake um and even guys even if you're not a water person
you gotta know that you might be asked about this on ielts this is for some reason this comes up in
speaking part one and part two all the time water activities describe something people do near the
water in part two like it comes up all the time guys so definitely choose some of the activities
we've talked about today and if you haven't done them think about what you would want to do and why
so you are ready for these for these questions on the ielts exam yes or be ready to describe
why you don't want to try anything totally yeah like your answer can be no or can be i don't
do any of those things but you still need that vocabulary you need to be able to name some of
the things that you don't want to try that's such a good point um all right guys remember that we
have a free ielts quiz for you with free resources go to all years english dot com slash my score
all right awesome aubry thanks for chatting today yeah see you next time