Daily Dose of English 85
Hobbies
Daily Dose of English 85
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about hobbies. Hobbies are those things that you have, we say you have them, but they're really things that you do to keep yourself interested in stuff. And I've always been a big fan of hobbies and learning about different hobbies and things in the world. And so I thought I'd talk about them. I don't think I've talked about them before. I could be wrong, who knows? But anyways, we're gonna do it today. So like I said, we say that you have hobbies and like somebody might say, oh, what are your hobbies? Do you have any hobbies? And you might respond with any number of things. Or you might not in some ways, because a lot of people are struggling to find hobbies, I think is how I wanna phrase that. Because with the rise of a really fairly addictive social media, YouTube, all these things, it can be easier and easier not to actually have any hobbies and end up with more like interests that don't really go anywhere. And so part of the reason that I want to record this episode is to hopefully maybe inspire somebody to pick up some hobbies in a different way. One good hobby to have is language learning. And I don't necessarily mean the passive version where you maybe listen to some things here and there, maybe 10 minutes a day or 15 minutes, right, where it's more of a thing you do every day, kind of like brushing your teeth or eating. but a slightly more involved hobby where it's a thing that you do every single day or every week and you're regular about it, you do certain specific things, you have milestones and goals, you talk to other people that are learning languages and you make friends, and it becomes a bit more part of your life than just being something that you do passively. When language learning is a hobby of yours, it can be really rewarding because you end up spending more time on the language, you get better at the language faster, and then you also get to move on to other languages if you want, and you can learn more about them and interesting facts and all sorts of cool things. And so there's a lot of cool stuff in language learning as a hobby. Another good hobby, in my opinion, are playing board games or games of some kind, physical games. We'll get to video games in a second, but I talked about those. And I've talked about board games and card games as well. But board games can be a fantastic hobby to have because it's inherently social. And having something to be social to do that is fun, that you enjoy, is a great way to go out and meet people and hang out and have a good time. And so, and plus there's so many great games, especially in the past five, 10 years, there's just been so many amazing games that come out and are released. And so playing games can be really fun. Plus a lot of games are in English. Many do have translations or localizations, but many people play in English even if a different language exists, either because the English version is easier to get or they're just used to it. And so it can be a great way to practice your reading abilities and having fun with things in English. Maybe you still play with your friends in your native language, but you can still pick up things here and there, and maybe if you can, find some English speakers to play with. Similar thing goes for video games, actually. Video games can be a hobby, especially if you don't just put away hundreds of hours without thinking about it. I wouldn't really call that a hobby. A hobby is something more deliberate in my mind. Maybe not literally, maybe the definition is different, but when I think of a hobby, I think of something that somebody specifically wants to do and wants to improve at and put time into. And so playing some video games or making video games certainly can be a hobby. Actually coding and doing lots of programming projects, either game development, software development, anything like that can be a fantastic hobby to have. Other good hobbies that are kind of similar on the computer are things like writing or making videos, making a daily dose of whatever native language is. Podcast is kind of a hobby. I would say this is a hobby that I have in a way. I'm not really doing it to for any reason other than I want to, and I want to make stuff for English learners, and I think that I can change and help other people that want to do this hobby as well. And so I think it definitely applies as a hobby. Applies? No. Counts. It definitely counts as a hobby. What other hobbies are good? A lot of people have making stuff hobbies. This can be a pretty wide range. You can make furniture and woodworking. You can get wood and make stuff out of that. Typically, we do call that woodworking or carpentry. If you're a carpenter, then you build stuff with wood. That's a hobby that you can have really cool results from because you can have a couch or a chair or something like that. Other people like to make more crafts. Maybe they make things out of like recycled materials or they make little dioramas which are like small scenes of things or they sewing, knitting, crocheting. These are all different ways to make something out of yarn or wool, cross-stitching or embroidery or other things as well. I know I'm throwing a lot of words out there, but I'm sure if you saw these, like you just looked up the image, you'd go, oh yeah, I know what that is. So I'm not really going to pause to explain each thing because I think we can talk about hobbies in general a bit more. Other good hobbies are things like cooking. I used to really like to cook a lot more instead of just for like food. Now, nowadays I cook a little bit more to like have food to eat and nourishment, but cooking can totally be a hobby where you try out new recipes, you try new things. Baking as well is a great hobby, especially because you can give people baked goods that are delicious. Um, and so definitely I recommend some of those because you can make friends easily that way. If you say to somebody, Hey, I actually have a bunch of extra cookies. Do you think you could come help me eat them? They're going to be like, uh, yeah, I'll eat your cookies. Um, other hobbies related to food are mixology, which is making cocktails and beverages and drinks. That's a really good, a fun one too. I definitely enjoy that. I don't do it as much right now. Um, but I, I go through phases where I enjoy mixology for sure. I already brought up writing, but I think that's one that I can go a little bit further into. Writing and reading are hobbies that are becoming less common nowadays with the rise of other mediums of stuff, videos, TikToks. Instead of writing, you might use a voice note or something like that. But writing and putting your thoughts down and creating a version of what you're trying to say that is concise and clear and easy to understand and beautiful is something that is very rewarding, especially if you have a reason for it. A lot of people are not good writers because they don't know how to write clearly and explain what they want to explain in a way that anybody can understand. Especially people that think they're good writers, I would say, maybe aren't. Because if your writing is hard to understand, is it really good writing? I would argue that no. And so I see this a lot on websites or people's questions or even a company talking about what it is or what they do can be pretty poorly written. Sure, it's hard. Like I'm not saying it's an easy thing that you should just be able to do, but that's kind of why it makes a good hobby. Reading as well is great. Reading books or comics or whatever you'd like to read is a fantastic way to learn stories and also to learn English if you want to combine English learning with your hobbies. You can also have a hobby of like going to the gym or going for runs or hiking. Hiking is a fantastic hobby because it gets you outside, you get exercise, you get to maybe chat with somebody, just whoever you're with, and have this sort of nice relationship with yourself and outside and other people. And I wish that I did more hiking for sure. Drawing as well, I can't believe I didn't mention that, that's a big hobby for a lot of people. I tried, I can't, it's not something that I'm really interested in, and I'm not very good at naturally, and so it really is hard for me, so I don't really like it, but I know many people that just love to draw, or to paint, or to create something with their hands that is just, that's beautiful. And so those are all fantastic hobbies. So I know I kind of just listed off a bunch of hobbies and called it an episode, but I hope that you maybe learned something and are thinking a little bit about your hobbies and are willing to share them down in the description below because I would be interested to see what kind of hobbies you have outside of learning English. But that's everything that I have for today. Thank you very much for listening and I'll see you again tomorrow. Have a good one. Bye.
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