ESL Vocabulary Worksheet: Sports Activities, Action Words (Elementary)

In this sports vocabulary worksheet, you are going to find ESL vocabulary exercises that will help students expand their vocabulary of sports action words and talk and answer questions about sports, sports activities, and the benefits of practicing sports. The worksheet includes vocabulary exercises on these topics, tailored to elementary (A1-A2) students.

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Preparation Notes for the Teacher

Required time: 45-60 mins

To warm up, ask your students “What’s your favorite sport?”, then list two activities each that you can “do”, “play” or “go”. Check if they understand the difference between these three and explain it with practical examples, like “I like to play tennis.”,“I do yoga”, “I go swimming on the weekends.”

Ask students if they do any of these sports activities, and encourage them to say full sentences with the correct verbs that accompany a specific sport or activity. Next, ask students to explain why playing sports is good. Give an example: Sports is good because it makes us healthy and strong.

Sports Activities

In this worksheet, you will learn to talk about sports and action words that describe sports activities.

You will also learn how to talk and answer questions about sports and sports activities, why people like sports, and why sports are good.

What’s your favorite sport? Do you like swimming? Do you play tennis? Why do you like sports? Why is sports good for you? Give an example.

Discuss the questions briefly with your teacher and the class, then answer the questions in Exercise A, B, C, and D.

Read the questions before answering to make sure you understand them.

A. Vocabulary: Various Activities

1. Use the words in the table to fill in the columns below. (There are 25 words in total.)

tennis swimming gymnastics jogging football ice-skating judo cycling skiing surfing karate badminton skateboarding fishing hiking volleyball yoga diving dancing snowboarding hockey horse riding taekwondo soccer weightlifting

PLAY	GO	DO

B. Use of Sports Action Words

2. Read and complete the sentences (a-j) with the correct words from the table in Exercise A. Some sentences can have more than one correct answer.

a) Do you want to go___________________ with me?

b) Let’s do ___________________ together in the park!

c) I can’t go ___________________ in the lake. It is too cold today!

d) I love the winter because I can go ___________________ and ___________________.

e) My sister plays ___________________ every Monday and Friday.

f) My brother never ___________________ hiking when it is raining.

g) Jenny and I ___________________ gymnastics on Thursday.

h) My mother and her friend Molly ___________________ badminton every weekend.

C. Reading: Talking About Sports

Read the text, then answer the questions in exercises 3 and 4.

WHY I LIKE SPORTS

Hi!

My name is Agatha and I love sports. My favorite sports are skateboarding and volleyball.

I go skateboarding with my friend Liz every Friday and Sunday in the skate park near our homes. My sister Carrie taught me how to skateboard when I was 6 years old. I love skateboarding because it is fast and fun, and you can do many tricks!

I like to play volleyball, too because I can play together with my classmates at school. We have a volleyball team called “Volleybees” and every year we go to competitions with teams from other schools.

I love to do sports with my friends and I think that it is good because I feel happy and healthy.

3. Use the words to make correct questions, then answer the questions.

a) Question: are/Agatha’s/sports/What/favorite/? _______________________________________________