miércoles, 27 de mayo de 2015

Talking point: Entertainment

This week's talking point is entertainment. Before getting together with the members of your conversation group, go over the questions below so that ideas flow more easily when you meet up with your friends and you can work out vocabulary problems beforehand.
  • What are your interests?
  • How do you spend your free time?
  • How do you spend your free time?
  • How would you spend your free time differently if you had more time or money or opportunity?
  • What are the benefits to society of giving people more downtime?
  • What films, books and music do you like? Why?
  • How often do you watch TV?
  • How often do you go to the cinema?
  • What was the last film you saw?
  • What do you think of it?
  • Do you ever go to art galleries or exhibitions?
  • What was the last one you went to?
  • What was it like?
  • Is seeing an exhibition your idea of entertainment?


To illustrate the topic, you can watch this Speakout video
Hi. I enjoy doing a lot of different things in my free time. Most of them are to do with music: I DJ both in London and internationally and I try to go to concerts and festivals whenever I can. How about you? How do you spend your free time?
My free time, when I have any, is playing golf. I discovered golf eight years ago and I’m addicted: whenever I can, I’ll get out on a golf course.
Photography; I like to watch films; really into music.
In my free time I’m an amateur opera singer and I also run an amateur opera company.
I spend my free time shopping, cooking, going to exhibitions, travelling, going to the theatre.
I exercise a lot: I spend a lot of time walking, running and boxing.
I play football, I play table tennis, I go bowling. I also do a radio show at my university.
Well, during my free time I read, I watch the news online and watch TV series and go out with my friends.
I spend most of my free time with my friends and, just getting together and watching films, listening to music. I like to read a lot and I like to draw and make clothes.

How would you spend your free time differently if you had more time or money or opportunity?
I’d travel more. I’d take my children to see more things around the world. They’ve travelled a little bit, I’ve travelled quite a lot, but I’d like to take them to see some of the things that the world has to offer.
If I had more free time, I think I’d be able to develop my own creativity.
Finding, maybe, a bit more about my heritage. I’m quite interested in that, and speaking to my parents about how they grew up and their parents and things like that.
I would spend more time practising music.
If I had more time, I would travel more.
If I had more free time, I’d see more of my friends and people that I don’t get to see enough. And I’d probably relax and go to the park a lot.

What are the benefits to society of giving people more downtime or more holidays?
I think if you had more time off you’d be able to do, you’d be able to explore your mind a lot more and people would become more educated, more intelligent and more aware of what’s going on in the world.
If we all had more free time, I think we’d all be able to let ourselves be more creative, as opposed to just work, work, work all the time.
I think that today when people don’t work from 9 to 5 so much any more: I think that more free time would do everyone a lot of good, as long as you have something to do with it, and you have, kind of, hobbies or friends to see.
They would be less stressed, I believe, because I think that people are very, very stressed nowadays.
I think society benefits from giving people more free time because it enables them to lead less stressed lives, reduces the pressures on them, and also increases interests and I think that a society that has a broad range of interests, a broad range of things that they like doing, is generally beneficial.