174 - 5-Minute English: Swimming AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast American English Podcast

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (174 - 5-Minute English: Swimming) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Go to PodExtra AI's podcast page (American English Podcast) to view the AI-processed content of all episodes of this podcast.

American English Podcast episodes list: view full AI transcripts and summaries of this podcast on the blog

Episode: 174 - 5-Minute English: Swimming

Author: Sonoro | Shana Thompson
Duration: 00:28:34

Episode Shownotes

Today, we’re diving into the topic of swimming. Whether you’re someone who loves the water or maybe you're a bit nervous around it, swimming is a great activity to talk about because it evokes very specific memories. The more memories we can recall, the easier it is to chat! Just

thinking about this topic reminds me of so many wonderful times at the pool. Today, I’ll share these stories; they’ll be used as a canvas to introduce words, expressions and collocations related to the topic of swimming. My goal is for you to walk away from this lesson feeling ready to talk to a native speaker about your experiences in the pool! Support Buy Me a Coffee Season 4 (Episodes 150 - 200) = Each episode includes a quiz, the PDF transcript (the text of the audio) with definitions of challenging words and the mp3 file. All Premium Content for Seasons 1, 2 and 3 (Episodes 001 - 150) - and get Season 4 at a discount. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Full Transcript

00:00:04 Speaker_01
Hi everybody! My name is Shawna and this is the American English Podcast. My goal here is to teach you the English spoken in the United States.

00:00:13 Speaker_01
Through common expressions, pronunciation tips, and interesting cultural snippets or stories, I hope to keep this fun, useful, and interesting. Let's do it! A while back, I mentioned that my family spent the summer in Brazil.

00:00:32 Speaker_01
I mentioned that we worked and enjoyed cultural festivals like Festa Junina. I also mentioned that I enrolled the girls So my two little daughters in a Brazilian school so that they could be fully immersed in Portuguese.

00:00:49 Speaker_01
Every morning they took art, math, and Portuguese classes. They lunch at the school cafeteria and they played at recess.

00:00:59 Speaker_01
It was a full immersion, which is very special for me because I love cultural exchange and language, as you guys probably know by now. And in the afternoons while we were in Brazil, we actually spent a lot of time at the pool.

00:01:15 Speaker_01
Our Airbnb had a pool and there was also a pool at the location where Lucas's client lives. And so since we don't have a pool in the US, I figured what a great time to learn how to swim. Not for me, for my two little girls.

00:01:37 Speaker_01
I put them in swim classes, and those classes really inspired this 5-minute English lesson. Truth be told, it was inspired from my very awkward attempts to speak to Clara and Julia's swim teachers about swimming in Portuguese.

00:01:56 Speaker_01
It was almost instantly that I realized I don't know the words in Portuguese for goggles, freestyle, diving board. Come on, these are basic words when you're talking about this topic.

00:02:11 Speaker_01
So it was clear that despite my decent level in Portuguese, I was not fluent in the topic of swimming. Today's lesson is going to be all about swimming so that you do feel fluent when you're discussing this topic in English.

00:02:29 Speaker_01
We're going to talk about my memories swimming throughout my life. And throughout the different stories, you'll hear phrases, collocations, and pretty much every word you need to know in order to chat with somebody about this.

00:02:46 Speaker_01
Now, if this is your first time listening to an episode like this one, you might be asking yourself, how can I make the most of it? Well, first off, this is an intensive listening exercise.

00:03:00 Speaker_01
You won't likely understand everything you hear, and that's why the audio is short. I'll replay the audio a second time at the end so that you can get a second chance to understand words in context.

00:03:17 Speaker_01
The first time listening, listen to the audio all the way through. Try to understand the gist or the main ideas. Then, while listening a second time, why not try to transcribe the story? Write down the story on a piece of paper, word for word.

00:03:38 Speaker_01
Or perhaps you could write 10 words down on a piece of paper that you don't feel comfortable using in conversation. That's what I would do if I were in your shoes. And then look them up in a dictionary.

00:03:52 Speaker_01
My previous students had a hard time figuring out how to retain words. So how to learn them, internalize them, and use them in conversation. One way to have these terms more readily available is to make them more familiar to you.

00:04:11 Speaker_01
Use flashcards if you need. Write a story with the words. You can even create conversation questions using those challenging words that you can use with a language teacher or partner. My favorite way is a bit old school.

00:04:28 Speaker_01
With each new word or phrase, I write one original sentence. It seems so simple, but writing is a creative task, and it can help you formulate your ideas.

00:04:42 Speaker_01
It's as if you have just a little bit more time and less pressure than a real-life conversation where someone asks you a question. You're not creating sentences on the fly. You have time to work them out and make sure they're correct.

00:04:57 Speaker_01
So, it's simple but very effective for me. Find out what's effective for you. Just know that by writing these terms or using them afterwards, it definitely helps with retention.

00:05:09 Speaker_01
If you want to get your sentences corrected, or you're not interested in working through all this content on your own, check out the premium content.

00:05:19 Speaker_01
Five-minute English lessons contain the PDF transcript, definitions for all of the challenging words and phrases, exercises, conversation questions, and quizzes. There's also a segment on pronunciation and a bonus video to take your learning further.

00:05:38 Speaker_01
It's quite a bit, but let me tell you, you will feel confident in this topic. You can find the link to premium content at AmericanEnglishPodcast.com or in the episode notes. Without further ado, let's begin today's episode.

00:06:02 Speaker_01
When I was a little kid, my parents said I was a fish. We would go on vacation, and no matter where we were in the world, I'd prefer spending the whole day at the hotel's swimming pool to sightseeing.

00:06:17 Speaker_01
My parents would often sit in lounge chairs and watch my brother and I as we swam back and forth. When they got bored, they told us to grab our towels and dry off.

00:06:31 Speaker_01
At a very young age, swimming, for us, was about kiddie pools, or the shallow end of bigger pools. The shallow end felt safe because the water only went up to about our knees.

00:06:47 Speaker_01
Even so, we always wore floaties on our arms or life vests on our chests to stay afloat.

00:06:57 Speaker_01
As we got older, my mom enrolled us in swim classes, where we learned basic swimming skills, like how to hold our breath for longer underwater, how to float on our backs, and how to tread water.

00:07:13 Speaker_01
Now, like most kids just learning to swim, my brother and I only knew how to doggy paddle. Swimming classes changed that by teaching us the basic strokes. We learned to glide through the water with ease.

00:07:30 Speaker_01
Soon enough, we could leave the shallow end of the pool and go to the deep end without our floaties and without sinking.

00:07:42 Speaker_01
My grandparents were members of what's called a country club, which was sort of a wealthy community with a communal golf course, a restaurant, and a swimming pool. During summertime, kids would flock to that pool.

00:08:01 Speaker_01
They would all congregate at it, including all of my cousins. There were probably about 10 of us between 8 and 12 years old, and we showed up in our bathing suits and swim trunks. Most of us had goggles to see underwater.

00:08:19 Speaker_01
A few of us carried rafts and pool noodles to float on. All in all, we were ready for a long day in the sun. Typically at pools, there are people who prefer sunbathing to getting wet. At the country club pool, that was my cousin Amanda.

00:08:41 Speaker_01
She was older than us and she would lay out for hours in her bikini, flipping every now and then to apply more tanning oil. We loved to splash her.

00:08:53 Speaker_01
But what I remember most about those pool days, apart from my mom applying sunscreen constantly and the snack bar, was the diving board. To me, the diving board felt like a stage, and the person on it was like a performer.

00:09:13 Speaker_01
They were the center of attention. As an eight or nine-year-old kid, I admired the bravery of other kids who did front flips or back flips off the diving board. There were always those crazy ones.

00:09:27 Speaker_01
Then there were the kids who would do cannonballs just to see how high their splash would go. Who really caught my attention, though, were the divers, the people who dove off the diving board.

00:09:45 Speaker_01
One note here, while dived and dove are acceptable simple past tense forms of the verb to dive, in American English, dove is more common. However, the past participle is dived. The divers dove off the diving board.

00:10:05 Speaker_01
They reminded me of pelicans going headfirst into the ocean to scoop up fish. It looked impressive. And I wanted to do it too.

00:10:17 Speaker_01
So after a number of diving attempts from the edge of the pool, I gathered my courage and walked up to the diving board, my heart racing with every step. And I'll never forget what happened next.

00:10:32 Speaker_01
Rather than chickening out in line, I got scared mid-flight. So halfway through my dive, and rather than going hands first and then head, I did a huge belly flop for everyone at the pool to see.

00:10:49 Speaker_01
If you've ever done a belly flop before, you know how much that hurts. Your face, belly, and legs hit the water at about the same time, which was pretty embarrassing. My belly flop knocked the wind out of me.

00:11:04 Speaker_01
When I finally emerged from the water, I could see the lifeguards staring, looking as if they were ready to jump in and save me. That's the great thing about public pools.

00:11:16 Speaker_01
Lifeguards are on duty, and they can rescue drowning swimmers and perform CPR if needed. In the U.S., most public high schools have sports teams, and one popular sport is swimming.

00:11:34 Speaker_01
When I was in high school, I was on the school swim team and on the water polo team. And some of my favorite memories as a teenager were spent with friends at swim practice and at swim meets. A swim meet is a competition between swim teams.

00:11:51 Speaker_01
Competitive swimming was different from the playful swimming I was used to. While we occasionally splashed our friends or did handstands on the bottom of the pool, our coach was always on our case.

00:12:05 Speaker_01
At practice, we had to swim laps and do perfect flip turns. We were critiqued on the four different strokes, freestyle or crawl, breaststroke, backstroke, and butterfly.

00:12:20 Speaker_01
We'd use kickboards to improve the strength of our kicks and another floating device to hold our legs stable so we could work on our arms. I'd never been in better shape.

00:12:33 Speaker_01
Now, the morning of our meets, we would have practice for two hours before school. Then after school, we'd head back to the pool.

00:12:41 Speaker_01
The guys would show up in speedos, no swim trunks allowed, and their arms and legs were shaved to improve their swim time. The girls, me included, wore one-pieces, no bikinis, and swim caps to keep our hair out of our faces.

00:13:00 Speaker_01
Then races and relays would begin. Swimmers would get on the starting block, and when the whistle was blown, they would dive into the water, gliding until they took off at full speed down their lane.

00:13:13 Speaker_01
Now, we didn't always win those meets, and nobody on my team ended up at the Olympics, but it was fun, and I never belly flopped again. That is the end of my story. I'm hoping you understood a lot of the terms I used based on the context alone.

00:13:33 Speaker_01
It was sort of fun to take a trip down memory lane. And I'll be honest, it was actually a great conversation starter with my mom. We spent about 30 minutes sharing our swimming memories. So maybe you should have this conversation with someone.

00:13:50 Speaker_01
Do you know how to swim? When did you learn? How did you learn? Have you ever dived off of a diving board? Have you ever belly flopped? Yeah, let me know on Instagram, at American English Podcast. One last thing before you hear the audio one last time.

00:14:11 Speaker_01
I started to think about swimming, and I realized that two of the most common words in this topic are probably to sink and to swim. We often use to sink or swim as an expression, meaning to fail or to succeed.

00:14:30 Speaker_01
But we'll go through more examples of that expression in a future episode. The point is, to sink and swim are both irregular. Let's do a pronunciation exercise with each of these terms.

00:14:44 Speaker_01
So, to sink, of course, means to descend or move downwards, typically in water or another substance due to weight, lack of buoyancy, or gravity. Sink, sank, sunk. Repeat after me.

00:15:04 Speaker_00
If you put too much weight on that boat, it will sink. The Titanic sank to the bottom of the Atlantic in 1912. By the time we arrived, the treasure chest had already sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Did you hear that? Sink, sank, sunk.

00:15:40 Speaker_01
We also had swim. Swim, swam, swum. Repeat after me.

00:15:47 Speaker_00
I like to swim every morning before work. Last summer, we swam across the lake in record time. They had swum all day and were exhausted by the evening.

00:16:07 Speaker_01
Swim, swam, swum. Yeah, swum is the past participle, and in all honesty, I don't often hear native speakers saying swum. I actually can't remember the last time I heard that word.

00:16:26 Speaker_01
In my personal opinion, and once again, this is completely just my perception, I think native speakers try to avoid it. Rather than saying, they had swum all day and were exhausted by the evening,

00:16:42 Speaker_01
It might be a little more common to say, they had been out swimming all day and were exhausted by the evening. Or, they had gone out swimming.

00:16:53 Speaker_01
Or maybe even they would just avoid the past perfect and say, they were out swimming all day and were exhausted by the evening. Just something to think about.

00:17:03 Speaker_01
I know a lot of your English teachers are forcing you to learn certain past participles that native speakers sometimes avoid.

00:17:11 Speaker_01
So I figured, why don't I just tell you this perception and then you can pay attention to it yourself and come up with your own conclusion. All right? So let's go ahead and listen to the story one more time.

00:17:24 Speaker_01
See if you pick up more terms during this second listen. Good luck. When I was a little kid, my parents said I was a fish.

00:17:40 Speaker_01
We would go on vacation, and no matter where we were in the world, I'd prefer spending the whole day at the hotel swimming pool to sightseeing. My parents would often sit in lounge chairs and watch my brother and I as we swam back and forth.

00:17:58 Speaker_01
When they got bored, they told us to grab our towels and dry off. At a very young age, swimming, for us, was about kiddie pools, or the shallow end of bigger pools. The shallow end felt safe because the water only went up to about our knees.

00:18:20 Speaker_01
Even so, we always wore floaties on our arms or life vests on our chests to stay afloat.

00:18:30 Speaker_01
As we got older, my mom enrolled us in swim classes, where we learned basic swimming skills, like how to hold our breath for longer underwater, how to float on our backs, and how to tread water.

00:18:45 Speaker_01
Now, like most kids just learning to swim, my brother and I only knew how to doggy paddle. Swimming classes changed that by teaching us the basic strokes. We learned to glide through the water with ease.

00:19:03 Speaker_01
Soon enough, we could leave the shallow end of the pool and go to the deep end without our floaties and without sinking.

00:19:15 Speaker_01
My grandparents were members of what's called a country club, which was sort of a wealthy community with a communal golf course, a restaurant, and a swimming pool. During summertime, kids would flock to that pool.

00:19:34 Speaker_01
They would all congregate at it, including all of my cousins. There were probably about 10 of us between 8 and 12 years old, and we showed up in our bathing suits and swim trunks. Most of us had goggles to see underwater.

00:19:53 Speaker_01
A few of us carried rafts and pool noodles to float on. All in all, we were ready for a long day in the sun. Typically at pools, there are people who prefer sunbathing to getting wet. At the country club pool, that was my cousin Amanda.

00:20:14 Speaker_01
She was older than us and she would lay out for hours in her bikini, flipping every now and then to apply more tanning oil. We loved to splash her.

00:20:26 Speaker_01
But what I remember most about those pool days, apart from my mom applying sunscreen constantly and the snack bar, was the diving board. To me, the diving board felt like a stage, and the person on it was like a performer.

00:20:45 Speaker_01
They were the center of attention. As an eight or nine-year-old kid, I admired the bravery of other kids who did front flips or back flips off the diving board. There were always those crazy ones.

00:21:00 Speaker_01
Then there were the kids who would do cannonballs just to see how high their splash would go. Who really caught my attention, though, were the divers, the people who dove off the diving board.

00:21:17 Speaker_01
One note here, while dived and dove are acceptable simple past tense forms of the verb to dive, in American English, dove is more common. However, the past participle is dived. The divers dove off the diving board.

00:21:38 Speaker_01
They reminded me of pelicans going headfirst into the ocean to scoop up fish. It looked impressive. And I wanted to do it too.

00:21:50 Speaker_01
So after a number of diving attempts from the edge of the pool, I gathered my courage and walked up to the diving board, my heart racing with every step. And I'll never forget what happened next.

00:22:05 Speaker_01
Rather than chickening out in line, I got scared mid-flight. So halfway through my dive, and rather than going hands first and then head, I did a huge belly flop for everyone at the pool to see.

00:22:22 Speaker_01
If you've ever done a belly flop before, you know how much that hurts. Your face, belly, and legs hit the water at about the same time, which was pretty embarrassing. My belly flop knocked the wind out of me.

00:22:37 Speaker_01
When I finally emerged from the water, I could see the lifeguards staring, looking as if they were ready to jump in and save me. That's the great thing about public pools.

00:22:49 Speaker_01
Lifeguards are on duty, and they can rescue drowning swimmers and perform CPR if needed. In the U.S., most public high schools have sports teams, and one popular sport is swimming.

00:23:06 Speaker_01
When I was in high school, I was on the school swim team and on the water polo team. And some of my favorite memories as a teenager were spent with friends at swim practice and at swim meets. A swim meet is a competition between swim teams.

00:23:24 Speaker_01
Competitive swimming was different from the playful swimming I was used to. While we occasionally splashed our friends or did handstands on the bottom of the pool, our coach was always on our case.

00:23:38 Speaker_01
At practice, we had to swim laps and do perfect flip turns. We were critiqued on the four different strokes, freestyle or crawl, breaststroke, backstroke, and butterfly.

00:23:52 Speaker_01
We'd use kickboards to improve the strength of our kicks and another floating device to hold our legs stable so we could work on our arms. I'd never been in better shape.

00:24:06 Speaker_01
Now, the morning of our meets, we would have practice for two hours before school. Then after school, we'd head back to the pool.

00:24:14 Speaker_01
The guys would show up in Speedos, no swim trunks allowed, and their arms and legs were shaved to improve their swim time. The girls, me included, wore one-pieces, no bikinis, and swim caps to keep our hair out of our faces.

00:24:33 Speaker_01
Then races and relays would begin, swimmers would get on the starting block, and when the whistle was blown, they would dive into the water, gliding until they took off at full speed down their lane.

00:24:46 Speaker_01
Now, we didn't always win those meets, and nobody on my team ended up at the Olympics, but it was fun, and I never belly flopped again. That's it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it.

00:25:02 Speaker_01
If you want to access the image worksheet and exercise worksheets for this text, once again, be sure to sign up to all premium content. You will find the link for that in the episode notes and on the website at AmericanEnglishPodcast.com.

00:25:20 Speaker_01
There's a lot of material that comes with these 5-minute English episodes. So, check that out. Hope you have a nice rest of your day. And until next time, bye. Thank you for listening to this episode of the American English Podcast.

00:25:34 Speaker_01
Remember, it's my goal here to not only help you improve your listening comprehension, but to show you how to speak like someone from the States.

00:25:44 Speaker_01
If you want to receive the full transcript for this episode or you just want to support this podcast, make sure to sign up to premium content on AmericanEnglishPodcast.com. Thanks and hope to see you soon!