ACADEMIC LISTENING TEST PRACTICE
SPORTS - THE INVENTION OF BASKETBALL
SPORTS - THE INVENTION OF BASKETBALL
For Students Preparing for Academic Tests / IELTS and TOEFL
Listen as you read the script.
Playing Time: 2 minutes 7 seconds
Millions of people love the sport of basketball in the United States and around the world, but few people stop to think about who invented it, why, where, and when. Today, we’re going to look at the answers to these questions. First then, it was a man called James Naismith who invented the game. He was born in 1861 in Ontario Canada and, like many other students his age, he loved to play sports in school. After he grew up, he became a sports education teacher before he moved to the state of Massachusetts, in the USA.
He invented basketball for two reasons. First, he wanted his students to have an indoor activity they could play during the winter months, when it was too cold to play outside. Second, he believed that basketball was a safer sport than football. The very first game of basketball was played on December 21, 1891, when James asked his college class to play a new kind of game that he had invented. Some of his students were reluctant to try this strange new sport of his, but they played anyway. His students loved the game, and someone suggested that the new game should be called the “Naismith Game”, but James Naismith decided to call it "basket ball," which was later shortened into just one word: “basketball."
There are some differences between the first games ever played over a hundred years ago, and the games we play and watch today. For example, there are now fewer players on a team (five players instead of nine). Also, the first games were played with soccer balls – the first real “basketball” (designed specially for the game) was only invented several years later. The basket net itself was also different. At first, there was no hole for the ball to fall through, and, so, whenever someone shot a ball through the hoop, the game had to be stopped while someone got the ball out of the basket. Only later did someone decide to cut a hole in the basket net. The sport of basketball later grew to become an international sport, as it became popular first in Europe, after the First World War, and then in China, India, and Japan, and then the rest of the world.
He invented basketball for two reasons. First, he wanted his students to have an indoor activity they could play during the winter months, when it was too cold to play outside. Second, he believed that basketball was a safer sport than football. The very first game of basketball was played on December 21, 1891, when James asked his college class to play a new kind of game that he had invented. Some of his students were reluctant to try this strange new sport of his, but they played anyway. His students loved the game, and someone suggested that the new game should be called the “Naismith Game”, but James Naismith decided to call it "basket ball," which was later shortened into just one word: “basketball."
There are some differences between the first games ever played over a hundred years ago, and the games we play and watch today. For example, there are now fewer players on a team (five players instead of nine). Also, the first games were played with soccer balls – the first real “basketball” (designed specially for the game) was only invented several years later. The basket net itself was also different. At first, there was no hole for the ball to fall through, and, so, whenever someone shot a ball through the hoop, the game had to be stopped while someone got the ball out of the basket. Only later did someone decide to cut a hole in the basket net. The sport of basketball later grew to become an international sport, as it became popular first in Europe, after the First World War, and then in China, India, and Japan, and then the rest of the world.
Note: For more cool ESL resources about sports, visit my All Things Topics site.
