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Women in Sports

Date: Sep 14 2007

Intro

1. Learn Vocabulary - Learn some new vocabulary before you start the lesson.

2. Read and Prepare - Read the introduction and prepare to hear the audio.

The road to the playing field has been a long one for women. For a long time, women weren’t allowed to play sports at all. Then, for a time, women were allowed to play but had to wear dresses and skirts even while running!

Only since a new law in the late 1970s gave more money to women’s sports in schools have women athletes been given a fair shake in the US. Now lots of sports fans find it just as fun to watch women compete as men.

Dialog

1. Listen and Read - Listen to the audio and read the dialog at the same time.

2. Study - Read the dialog again to see how the vocab words are used.

Kevin

Devan

Kevin: So you know, I did my undergraduate work at the University of Minnesota and that’s where hockey is huge, and the women’s hockey team is amazing.

Devan: Really? I didn’t even know they had women’s hockey.

Kevin: It’s big time...women’s hockey…

Devan: Like professional?

Kevin: Like borderline professional. I mean, they’re really amazing. And with Title IX, I don’t know if you know that…

Devan: Uh-uh.

Kevin: That’s like for…It requires equal dollar amounts given to collegiate and high school female sports as well as male sports.

Devan: That’s awesome.

Kevin: So there’s an equal number of scholarships available to women as there are to men. It’s really brought up the level of women’s sports. It’s amazing. Like in the hockey team. You see one of their games and they’re so much fun, you know?

Devan: Do you think that women’s sports will catch on?

Kevin: I mean, I would like to see the WNBA be as big as the NBA, but I don’t know, the men’s has been around for a long time. But you know, the women in tennis…Women’s tennis is as popular as men’s tennis and it has been for a long time.

Devan: Well, that’s ‘cause Anna Kournikova is a babe.

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Discussion

The colder parts of the United States are really into hockey. Kevin went to school in Minnesota, one of coldest places in the country, so naturally he went to some hockey games.

But interestingly, he went to women’s hockey games. Devan didn’t even know that women had hockey teams. Kevin explains that since the passage of Title IX (now known as the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act to honor the woman who wrote it), women’s sports teams have the same funding as men’s sports teams.

But will women’s sports ever be as popular as men’s? They’ve got a long way to go, and men’s sports have a head start. But in some places such as tennis, the sexes get equal attention. Devan jokes that this is only because a particular Russian tennis player is really beautiful.

Have you ever gone to see women compete? Do women play sports where you live?

Comments

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Christoph07

Germany

Yeah it is good that girls can do the most sports also. What atractive is, says newspapers and tv. Girls are boxing, playing soccer are good in motocross and offroad-car-driving (Jutta Kleinschmidt at Rally Paris Dhakar) and so on. Woman and man has a different condition of body. But if you want to drive motocross or other motorsport you must be so good like the men,because you dont find a spezial league for girls. At Olympic Wintergames you find everything but not ski-jumping for girls. Why? And why you have different leagues at sports where the different of body-condition doesent matter, like in chess?

m.imran

Pakistan

About Women sports.it depend on the culture of the soceity.if the soceity allow to women to take part the sports & women also want, so heavy budget may be made for women.

zhangzhenchao

China

yeah.along with the world culture chang and something will be fair shake.

In the mean while,ideology of people is very important.

starfighteradara

Philippines

I sometimes get to see the track team of my university training at the track oval where I go jogging. It's very clear that the number of men track team members equals the number of women players. I often observe the team practicing and men and women do the same routines as each other. I've watched both genders run with weights, jump hurdles, and throw javelins. It's also great to observe how well they all get along. Here in the Philippines, our homegrown martial art is a form of stick fighting called arnis. It attracts men and women alike. I'm glad that women can enjoy and compete in a variety of sports today. I think both genders are equally good in many sports and it's unfair to say that only one gender has a monopoly on any sport.