ACTIVITY
1: READING COMPREHENSION
ESPORTS
Playing
computer games is fun. It’s also a serious business with competitions,
champions, fans
and big
money prizes. Read all about esports!
Last summer over 12,000 fans were at Wembley Arena in
London, shouting and cheering. Thousands more were watching online. But this
wasn’t a football, basketball or tennis match. It was esports, or competitive
computer gaming. The prize money for the winners: £3 million.
Millions of people in the UK play games for fun. Some
of them have become professional gamers, playing games as their full-time job.
Did you know that football teams such as West Ham and Manchester City employ
esports players? They send them around the world to compete in football video
game competitions. It’s not easy being a professional gamer, though. They
practise for ten or more hours a day, five or six days a week. They do
exercises like typing something and trying to type it faster and faster. They also
study videos of other players and plan ways to beat them.
As well as playing games, many people like watching
them too. You can watch games on video sites like Twitch and YouTube and in the
UK there’s a TV channel showing esports 24 hours a day. They can be exciting to
watch: just like other sports, there are close games, last-minute victories and
amazing performances. Sometimes online viewers can interact with the game. For
example, some games rename characters in the game with the names of online
viewers!
But are esports really sports? Are players athletes?
Some say no. Esports players don’t need to run, jump, throw or do big physical
actions. At the moment, the UK government classifies esports as kinds of games,
not as sports.
But others say yes: esports are sports. Players do
need some physical skills, especially hand–eye
coordination, reflexes, accuracy and timing. If darts,
snooker and shooting are classified as sports, then perhaps esports should be
too. In fact, the governments of China and South Korea do classify esports as sports,
and they will be an official medal sport in the Asian Games starting from 2022.
Next step: the Olympics?
For many esports fans and players, though, the most
important thing is that esports are growing in
popularity and importance. If esports are not as
important as sports at the moment, they definitely will be in the near future.
Fuente: Learn English Teens. British
council. (s.f.) Verb Patterns, Esports https://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/uk-now/read-uk/esports
Choose the
correct verb form to complete these sentences.