Figure Skating

One of my students from False Beginner Level inspired me with her favourite winter sport „Figure Skating“. So I decided to put it into the English lesson and have students talk about it.

The Figure skating was the winter topic that my students wished to put it into the English lessons.
In fact, I gathered rough information from the Drive Magazine and tailored it for each English level.
It looked like bellow for example for Intermediate Level.

FIGURE SKATING                                                                                                             
It is winter.The lakes are frozen and public ice rinks are open.Let’s go figure skating!
If you can’t figure skate yourself, you can watch it on TV.Figure skating is not just a sport, it is an art, too.People skate, jump and spin on ice with music.In figure skating you can skate alone or in couples.
In figure skating, the man holds the woman in his arms.

Clothes: Women usually wear a colourful dress or trousers, and men wear a specially designed shirt and trousers.  Competition costumes can cost thousands of dollars if they are designed by professional costume makers!
Skates: Skates for figure skating are different than skates for ice-hockey.The blades are 4.7 mm thick with a groove in the middle – it makes two lines on the ice.The blades are 2.5 cm shorter than blades on other skates to make difficult dance steps easier to do.

Ice rinks: An ice rink should be 60 m long and 30 m wide.The ice should have -24°C.The ice should be cleaned and smoothed regularly because the teeth on the blades damage the ice.Some ice rinks have a harness system because jumping on ice is quite dangerous.The skater has a special vest which is connected to the harness.So she or he can practise jumps safely.

Did you know?
The first figure skating club was in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1742.The World Championships started in St.Petersburg, Russia, in 1896.It has been an Olympic sport since 1908.

Source: Drive, January 2017.