Luyện theo cấu trúc Cambridge IELTS 7 · Listening Part 3: Sports Psychology in a Hockey Team

Maya: Hi Daniel. Have you got a few minutes to go over our sports psychology assignment? The deadline's the twentieth, so we haven't got long.

Daniel: Sure. I've just finished reading through the notes from our interviews with the university hockey team. I learnt a lot more than I expected, actually.

Maya: Me too. What surprised you most?

Daniel: Well, I'd assumed the players would say that nerves before a match were their biggest problem. But hardly anyone mentioned that. What came up again and again was how hard they found it to recover after they'd made a mistake during a game.

Maya: Yes, several of them said that one bad pass could ruin the next ten minutes of their game. And I'd expected a few complaints about the coach, but there weren't any at all.

Daniel: No. And the coach herself was more open to psychology than I thought she'd be. I was sure she'd say it was all common sense.

Maya: She was quite positive, wasn't she? She didn't question whether the methods work, and she didn't think the players would feel silly trying them. Her real worry was that the players simply don't have room for anything else in their week. They train four evenings already, and most of them have part-time jobs.

Daniel: Right. Now, the literature review. How's the section on goal-setting going?

Maya: Slowly. I found it really hard to write.

Daniel: Really? I'd have thought there wasn't much published on it.

Maya: The opposite, actually. There's so much research that I couldn't decide what to leave out. And the studies mostly agree with each other, so it isn't that they're confusing. In the end I limited it to studies of team sports.

Daniel: That sounds sensible. And for the results section, I was going to draw a bar chart for every question in the questionnaire.

Maya: That would be twenty charts!

Daniel: I know. So I've changed my mind. I think we should only chart the three questions where the players' answers were most varied, because that's where there's something to discuss. Everything else can go in a short paragraph.

Maya: Agreed. Oh, and Dr Hendry sent back her comments on our draft. I was expecting her to say our references were incomplete.

Daniel: So was I. But she said they were fine. Her main point was that our conclusions go further than the data allows. We only interviewed twelve players, so we can't claim the techniques work for all athletes.

Maya: Fair enough. We'll tone that down. OK, now let's go through what the players said about each technique, so we can write the discussion. Visualisation first, imagining a perfect performance in detail.

Daniel: Most of them had tried it. They said it worked well in practice sessions, but in a real match everything happens too fast, so they found it much less useful there.

Maya: Then there's self-talk, repeating short phrases to yourself like 'stay calm' or 'next ball'.

Daniel: That was a funny one. Quite a lot of them used it, but they didn't like admitting it. One player laughed and said he'd never told anyone before, not even his teammates.

Maya: What about breathing exercises? I assumed they'd mainly use those during matches.

Daniel: So did I, but no. The main benefit, according to them, was the night before a big game. They said slow breathing helped them get to sleep instead of lying awake.

Maya: Interesting. And pre-match routines, like always putting your kit on in the same order?

Daniel: You'd think only the senior players would bother with those, but even the first-years had them. It turns out the coach had suggested that every player should develop one, and she'd given them some examples to start with.

Maya: And finally, the training journal. Several players started writing one at the beginning of the season.

Daniel: Yes, but almost all of them gave up within a few weeks. It wasn't that they found it hard to learn, they just didn't keep it up.

Maya: OK, I think we've got enough for the discussion now. Shall we meet again on Friday?

Daniel: Friday's good.