Learnenglish Magazine Physical Education Support Pack

8/13/2019 Learnenglish Magazine Physical Education Support Pack

1/3

Magazine Physical education

Page 1 of 3The United Kingdoms international organisation for educational opportunities and cultural relations.We are registered in England as a charity.

IntroductionYou can listen to a recording of this article at:http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/magazine-articles/physical-education

This support pack contains the following materials:

the article that you can listen to

a comprehension activity based on the article

Read the article

Physical educationby Richard Sidaway

School days are supposed to be the best days ofyour life and part of that experience usually

involves some strenuous physical activity. I askedsome colleagues to give me their recollections ofwhat happened to them on the sports field andbeyond, and this is what they told me

Cup winners

When I was about ten, the football team from ouryear inexplicably made it to the cup final of thelocal schools league. I say inexplicably because I

only remember us losing nearly every match weplayed. Anyway, in the final I set up the winninggoal, a brilliant cross to my mate David whoheaded the ball in just before the final whistle. Istill have a photograph of the team holding thecup.

Forest hike

I remember having to lead a group of eight boyson a school expedition for the best part of twodays when I was a teenager. Even though we got

lost at one point, I managed to keep them alltogether and got them from one end of a largeforest to the other and back by sheer force of will.

I was chosen to be the leader, I think, because Iwas the only one who knew how to read a map!

When we arrived back at the campsite we foundout that all the other groups had cheated andhitched most of the way instead... I felt a bit of amug, but also rather proud of myself at the sametime for having done it properly.

Learning to swim, learning to drown

I learned to swim comparatively late, I suppose, Iwas maybe nine years old, but my brother had atraumatic experience which nearly put him off forlife. We lived in the USA for a while and hadaccess to a university pool where the coacheshad trained the American Olympic team. In thosedays, though, their idea of teaching kids how toswim was to tie a tin can to their ankles with a bitof string, throw them in the deep end and shoutSwim!. Im surprised my brother survived at all.He could only have been about six at the time.

Sponsored walk

One of my earliest physical feats was probably

going on a ten-mile walk for charity when I wasabout seven. I went with my older brother and myDad, but they didnt make much allowance for thefact that my legs were shorter - I had to go at thesame pace as them! Even so, I made it andraised quite a lot of money from school friendsand teachers who had agreed to pay me forevery mile I walked.

Cross-country ordeal

I remember one dark, wet afternoon in February

being herded out onto the school field and havingto run three miles across country while the raincame bucketing down. Soon we were all


2/3



drenched to the skin, shivering with cold and theonly way to stay warm was to keep running. Oneof the gym teachers, who had been sitting inside

having a cup of tea, came out to meet us halfwayaround the course and told us to jump over astream before we could start on the home stretch.This teacher actually stood on the hands of theboys he didnt like as they were trying to climb upthe muddy bank on the other side, so that theyslid back down into the freezing water. I wasdisgusted by this, but of course I didnt sayanything, I was only twelve. I think it changed myview of human nature a bit after that, the fact thatsomeone who I had previously respected couldbe so cynical and cruel.

Dwarfed in Germany

We went on a tour of Germany one year fromsecondary school to play football against threedifferent teams there. Everyone was violently sickon the ferry going across to Holland, and thewhole thing was a bit of a farce as the teacherwho had arranged it didnt speak German verywell so we ended up playing teams who werethree or four years older than us! Naturally we gotbeaten every time.

Climb every mountain

One of my best memories of early physicalendeavour was climbing Ben Nevis, which is the

tallest mountain in the British Isles. It was aglorious day, which is pretty rare for that part ofScotland, and we walked up in about five hours.

The last bit is pretty hard going as its a zigzagpath of big stones. We took the family dog andshe had a really difficult time of it. The strangestthing was that we didnt see too many people onthe way up, and then when we reached the top itwas suddenly covered with Japanese tourists. Ican only presume they had been airlifted there byhelicopter.

Down to earth

My cousins were always the outdoor,

adventurous types, learning how to canoe andwindsurf and abseil and so on. One day, one ofthem climbed onto the top of the house to fixsome tiles with my uncle. The next minute heappeared at the kitchen door a little bit dazed andhis mother, who was cooking lunch, looked at himin surprise and said: What are you doing here? Ithought you were helping your Dad.Ive just fallen off the roof, Mum, he said.Apparently he had overbalanced and toppledover backwards. Because he had recently beendoing parachute training -his latest hobby- he hadrolled over automatically when he hit the ground,without thinking. This was a big, old two-storeyhouse and he must have been at least 10 metresfrom the ground, but he didnt have a scratch onhim!

Af ter reading

Exercise 1Choose the best answer to each of the following 8 questions.

1. What did the first person do in the schools cup final?

a. He scored the winning goalb. He provided the pass for the final goalc. He blew the whistle at the end of the game

2. The second person felt a bit stupid after hiking through the forest because

a. the other groups had arrived before themb. the other groups had known how to read the mapc. the other groups had gone by car instead of walking


3/3



3. When he was learning to swim, this persons brother

a. shouted at the coach

b. started in the shallow end of the poolc. had something attached to him

4. Which sentence is not true about the walk for charity

a. he walked quite slowlyb. he walked a long wayc. he was quite young at the time

5. Which sentence is not true about the cross-country run

a. the teacher made the students run in the rain

b. the teacher ran the whole way with the studentsc. the teacher made some of the boys fall into the stream

6. His school team lost all of its matches in Germany because

a. they were all sick from the journey thereb. they didnt speak Germanc. the teams they played were older than them

7. Why was the final part of climbing the mountain more difficult?

a. there were lots of people in the wayb. the dog refused to continuec. they had to walk over large stones

8. What was surprising about what happened to the persons cousin?

a. he wasnt hurtb. he fell a long wayc. his parachute didnt open

Answers to comprehension activi ty :1. b; 2. c; 3. c; 4. a; 5. b; 6. c; 7. c; 8. a

Documents

Learnenglish Magazine Physical Education Support Pack