Zapp! English Listening 2.16 - Food (& Ingredients)
Taught by Katie Wood — Cambridge CELTA · Cambridge DELTA · Cambridge-accredited Teacher Trainer
Recorded and taught by a team of British and North American English teachers, based in Oxford (UK) and Barcelona (Spain).
Nicholas talks us through his family's spaghetti puttanesca — olives, capers, big chunky tomatoes, extra garlic — and then admits the recipe calls for anchovies, "which I don't put in". A few minutes later Ronny introduces a word Katie has to stop and query: "stoups". Not a mistake, it turns out: "That's a combination of soup and stew." This is thirteen and a half minutes of six people talking about food they genuinely cook and eat, with the small hesitations and self-corrections that come with it.
What you'll hear in this episode
Three short listening tasks, six speakers, British and American accents.
First, Nicholas and Jesse describe a dish they make often. His is the puttanesca; hers is lasagne with soya veggie mince, "just to make it a bit healthier", carrots and mushrooms sometimes, made on a Sunday night so it's ready for Monday. The task is simple but the language isn't: you have to decide whether the dishes are sweet or savoury while the details fly past.
Then Katie and Ronny compare typical diets. Ronny prefers chicken to beef, describing the beef available to her as "inedible" — then softening it with a joke: "if you like to chew and chew and chew it's fine." There's rice versus pasta, thick healthy soups, and a nicely honest exchange about sweet things. Ronny only needs a couple of bites: "my downfall is great bread." Katie can't do moderation at all — she has to have "a packet of cookies and a tub of ice-cream".
Finally, Sandra and Hannah answer the same question: one food for the rest of your life. Sandra's answer has changed over the years, and she lands on Thai: "I could live the rest of my life on just Thai food". Hannah loves basil and pesto, but craves spice too — "I don't think I could choose between them."
Quick facts
| Episode | 2.16 |
| Pack | Listening 2 |
| Level | 2 |
| Duration | 13 minutes 40 seconds |
| Topic | Food and ingredients |
| Speakers | Six, British and American accents |
| Workbook | Included in the all-in-one pack (€39) |
What you'll learn
The useful thing about food talk is how much of it is hedging and self-correction. Ronny doesn't say "I dislike beef" — she says "I'm not really into meat", "I never...did eat a lot of beef", "I'm not major into sweets, no." Hannah does the same with her opinions: "I would possibly choose Italian", "I don't know if I could." Learning to hear these softeners, and to use them yourself, is what makes an opinion sound natural rather than blunt.
You'll also work on a genuinely hard listening skill: holding a list in your head. Nicholas lists his ingredients in one long, unbroken stretch with "er" and "erm" scattered through it, and the extra questions ask you to name three of them. That means listening past the hesitation to the content.
And there's the sweet/savoury distinction, checked before the first task, plus the everyday grammar of habits: what you usually eat, what you tend to cook, what you could live on. The third task uses second and third conditionals throughout — "if you had asked me that question maybe three years ago, I would have said Mexican food" — spoken at natural speed, not drilled.
Vocabulary from the workbook
- capers (noun) – a small round green, strong tasting food. In Nicholas's puttanesca sauce.
- anchovies (noun) – a small salty fish. The one ingredient he leaves out.
- extravagant (adjective) – something that is very expensive, often more expensive than it needs to be. Ronny uses it about imported beef.
- inedible (adjective) – not good enough to eat, too bad to eat.
- chew (verb) – use your teeth to cut food into small pieces in your mouth so you can swallow it.
- pesto (noun) – a green Italian sauce made from herbs, oil and cheese. Hannah says she could eat it forever.
The workbook
The workbook that goes with this episode is part of the all-in-one pack. It sets up each of the three listening tasks with a question to answer before you listen, then gives the answers with an explanation — including why Ronny is probably the healthier eater of the two.
After that there are six extra listening questions for a second, closer pass: three ingredients in the puttanesca, what Jesse puts in her lasagne, the three countries Sandra mentions, and whether Hannah prefers Thai or Italian. Answers are at the back, so you can check yourself against the transcript.
The vocabulary work has two parts. A guessing-from-context exercise takes three lines from the recording — "bung it in the fridge", "a combination of soup and stew", "you really crave it again" — and asks you to decide the word class first, then match a definition. There's also the glossary above, and the full transcript of every conversation.
Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39
Frequently asked questions
Is the audio free?
Yes. The English conversations are free to download. The workbook is part of the €39 all-in-one pack.
Is the conversation scripted?
No. The conversations are unscripted — that's why you hear the pauses, the false starts and words like "stoups". The teaching sections that set up the tasks and give the answers are scripted, so the instructions stay clear.
What level is this episode?
Level 2, from the Listening 2 pack. The tasks ask for one answer at a time, so you don't need to catch every word.
How long does it take?
The audio runs 13 minutes 40 seconds. With the extra questions and vocabulary exercises, allow around half an hour.
What if I can't follow the fast parts?
Use the transcript. Listen once for the task answer, once with the transcript in front of you, then once more without it.
Get this episode
To save the audio, right-click the MP3 link and choose Save link as.
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