Sports and Physical Activities: Do, Play, Go
Sports vocabulary in English is governed by a counterintuitive verb-collocation system. Play goes with team and ball sports (play football, play basketball, play tennis). Go goes with sports ending in -ing (go swimming, go running, go cycling, go skiing). Do goes with martial arts, gymnastics, and individual activities (do karate, do yoga, do gymnastics, do athletics). Learners who get the verb wrong mark themselves immediately. The worksheet trains the verb choice plus broader sports vocabulary (team, match, score, score a goal, win, lose, draw, tournament, league, championship).
This worksheet builds A2–B1 fluency with sports vocabulary, with explicit attention to the do / play / go verb-collocation rule.
Worksheet preview
What’s inside:
- Verb-collocation table showing which sports take do, play, or go
- Picture matching for sports recognition
- Gap-fill with the correct verb for each sport
- Multiple-choice items distinguishing similar collocations (play football / go swimming / do yoga)
- Personalised production: describe the sports you play, watch, or follow
Common challenges: Verb choice is the central A2 trap — I make sport (German pattern) doesn’t work; English needs I do sport or sport-specific verb. False friends: Spanish competir maps to compete; German Sport machen maps to do sport. Match (single event), game (single event, also general), tournament (multi-game series) — the terms aren’t interchangeable. Win and lose take direct objects (win the game, lose the match); defeat takes an opponent (defeat the team).
For: Adult and teenage learners (14+) at CEFR A2 to B1, in pre-intermediate and intermediate classes, 1:1 lessons, or self-study. Sports vocabulary is core to Cambridge A2 Key (KET) and B1 Preliminary (PET) Speaking and informal-writing tasks. Part of the Culture & Society collection — the natural next step is Crime and Punishment Vocabulary, which moves from leisure into social-issue territory.
