English and Outdoor Activities
Today we talk about outdoor activities, learn more new vocabulary and I also share a tip when talking about activities: Go + Activity + ing. Tune in to find out more. Enjoy :)
Links mentioned
Episode [114] How To Use Double Negatives in English
Learn With Me
Transcript
Hi amigos and amigas, you are listening to the one and only English Made Simple show, this is episode number 1-20, one hundred and twenty, numero ciento veinte.
Yo yo, welcome amigos. Nice to have you join me today. My name is Milena from www.englishmadesimple.net, I am your English coach and your Jedi master, you can think of me as your Yoda, showing you the way to English fluency.
As the host of this successful English learning podcast, I have been listening carefully to what you guys really want. In the past few months, I’ve received requests from you for English lessons. Some of you have reached out to me needing help with English and asked about lessons where you could practice the speaking bit.
You know what, you’ve been listening to me for a while now, for over a year actually and I think it’s about time I listen to you.
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Righto, cool bananas! Now let’s start with today’s show.
Today, I want to share a tip with you on how you can sound more fluent in English, and we will be talking about Outdoor activities. You will not hear any drum rolls today. I will keep my lame jokes to the minimum haha I will try my best.
So last week we covered gym workouts and we learnt some new vocabulary, and then in the last short and sweet episode we learnt some new and useful phrasal verbs when it comes to food and exercise.
How many of you did exercise last week? How many of you exercised last week? How many of you ate junk food last week? Uhm, and be honest here haha, for example, me… well I went to the gym twice last week. That’s an improvement from the week before actually, when I didn’t do any exercise. But the reason for exercising last week was because I had chips, I had french fries, I ate junk food so I had to burn calories. I had to work off all that junk food I ate.
I am kind of over the gym environment, I am kind of over it to tell you the truth, I spent too much time at the gym in my 20’s that now I prefer to take it easy. I prefer to do Pilates and maybe some floor exercises. I am yet to get into yoga. I am not so stretchy, but I will soon try it.
And the reason I am kind of over the gym environment, is because it is enclosed, it is an enclosed space, and you exercise indoors. It’s an indoor activity.
But what I really enjoy doing is the outdoors. To be out of the house. If possible and if weather permits, I like to spend time in the nature go hiking, jogging or walking on the beach. That’s what I enjoy more than going to the gym!
Today’s episode is still relevant to the last week’s episode which was about Exercise and Fitness, only this time I would like to teach you vocabulary related to recreational activities or outdoor activities. And at the end of the show I will share a tip how you can sound more fluent when talking about outdoor activities. So stick around!
What do I mean when I say outdoor activities? You can do your exercises indoors or outdoors.
Inside or outside.
The opposite of outdoor is indoor.
Outdoor is an adjective and can be used in other contexts not just when you talk about exercise.
You can use it to describe other things like events, concerts and gatherings. You could be attending an outdoor concert. For example, well I have one personal example – when I went to see the Rolling Stones live in New Zealand, their concert took place outdoor, it was an outdoor concert. Then it started to rain, I remember, as is the case in New Zealand, it rains quite often there. But that didn’t stop us from having fun and dancing like Mick Jagger.
What are some other activities you could be doing outdoors? What are some outdoor activities? What are some other outdoor activities you could be doing?
If you enjoy swimming in the pool o piscina in Spanish, the swimming pool I mean, you could go to an outdoor swimming pool or an indoor swimming pool, if you like it indoors. What this means is that the swimming pool is located outside, when we say it’s an outdoor swimming pool, when it’s out in the open, and an indoor swimming pool is located inside a place, under cover. It has a ceiling / techo in Spanish and it will protect you from the rain haha.
You can use the word outdoor to describe a person who enjoys to spend their time outdoors. You can say for example: Carlos is the outdoor type. He likes to climb trees and eat bananas. Escalar o subirse a los arboles y comer bananas Haha there it is, a bad joke, that was a bad joke haha
So, Carlos is the outdoor type meaning he is into hiking, bush walking, mountaineering, doing outdoor activities really.
So as I mentioned earlier, an outdoor activity means doing stuff outside, out of the house, do something that requires you to be outdoors.
That’s an interesting word, outdoors!
If you like to spend time in the outdoors it means you like to be away from people, somewhere where are fewer houses, where it’s not very crowded, somewhere in the forest, the bush, on the beach, somewhere out in the nature, far away!
What are some of the outdoor activities that we can do?
Well, an easy one that comes to mind is hiking. Or if you are in New Zealand they call it tramping over there, other people call it trekking, bush walking, salir a caminar o caminata in Spanish.
You can also go jogging on the beach…outside, well if you don’t like jogging just walk, walk at a fast pace to increase your heart rate, which is good for you. Any type of exercise is good for you, whether it’d be an outdoor or an indoor activity.
If you are an adrenalin junkie, you are a bit of thrill seeker – you enjoy the adrenalin rush then you can do some extreme outdoor activities. You can go rock climbing or abseiling – another word for abseiling is rappelling, what’s another thing you can do outdoors, what’s the other one… aha caving, white water rafting, skydiving, paragliding, kite-surfing, wind surfing or just surfing. These things are popular here in Australia.
I think you can tell that I am not an adrenalin junkie, I am quite the opposite of an adrenaline junkie. I am scared of heights and acceleration, or speed where I am not in control. Some people enjoy it and I do admire those people, but I still like to be on the ground doing something more relaxing, such as walking.
Adrenaline junkie – is a reference to someone who is addicted to the adrenaline rush. Adicto a la adrenalina in Spanish.
What do you enjoy doing? Which one do you prefer, an outdoor activity or an indoor activity?
Interesting, think about that!
So amigos, let me share a tip now, whenever we talk about activities, it could be our hobbies as well, we normally use the word GO + the name of the activity which will be in gerund form. Gerund is that ING, -ing! At the end of a verb.
For example, what are you doing this weekend? This sentence implies a future tense so my answer will be:
I am going fishing.
Another example:
What do you like to do on the weekends? Meaning what do you like to do every weekend?
The answer will be, I like to go fishing. For example: Last weekend I went fishing. That’s in the past tense.
What are you going to do this weekend? I am going to go swimming.
Next month, I will go sky-diving. Every winter I go snowboarding. Or every winter I go skiing.
Whenever we refer to a recreational or leisure or athletic activities we construct the sentence with Go + -ing. Remember that the verb GO will change according to the tense. It’s an irregular verb and the past tense is Went, participle GONE.
Where is Carlos? He’s gone fishing. What did Carlos do last weekend? He went fishing last weekend.
Well, I hope this was crystal clear, clear as mud! Easy peasy lemon squeezey.
Alright amigos y amigas, this bring us to the end of the show. Before we finish, let me ask you this question, what did you do last weekend? Think about activities you were doing. And if you didn’t do anything special, then say, I did nothing or I didn’t go anywhere OR I didn’t do anything. We have to use the word anything here instead of nothing, because we can’t have double negatives!
If you wanna learn more about the double negatives, we covered them in episode 1-1-4 number one hundred and fourteen. Hop into your time machine and transport yourself to episode 1-1-4.
It’s been a pleasure jamming with you today amigos y amigas, thank you for joining me today until next time, hasta la proxima!