Zapp! English Academic Vocabulary Lesson Unit 2.1

Katie asks a simple question about the word function and gets a very English answer. "Do you have a function?" she says, and after the laughter dies down the conversation turns into a proper explanation: phones that make calls, send emails and take photographs, and "Multi-functional devices." Then Katie adds her own condition for spending money on a phone: "I would not pay a lot of money for a phone until it can make me a cup of tea." That's the shape of this unit — twelve academic words, each one explained, then talked about like normal people talk.

What you'll hear in this episode

This is Unit 2.1 of our Academic Vocabulary pack, and it covers twelve high-frequency words from the Academic Word List: analysis, function, research, assessment, source, estimate, financial, income, investment, export, area and distribution.

Each word follows the same four steps. You hear a definition, then example sentences with the word missing so you can guess it, then you repeat the answer, and then you hear it used naturally by our speakers. Katie leads the conversations, with Keith, Liz and Annie joining her.

The unscripted parts are where the words come alive. For analysis, one of the speakers explains that they are paid to analyse things and describes doing a cost analysis for a company, or collecting many different opinions and looking for a common trend. For source, Katie heads off the obvious confusion first — "I don't mean… tomato sauce that you put on your chips" — before the talk moves on to "The hunt for the source of the Nile," the source of a problem, and a journalist's source inside government. For estimate, Katie invites Keith to guess her age and he refuses: "too polite… to try and estimate your age." They land on the joke version instead — "They put guess and estimate together" — guesstimate. And when Keith asks Katie "How are your finances?" the answer is one word: "Rubbish!"

Liz works through assessment — written, oral and practical, including a driving test — while Annie handles income and investment, pointing out that people also invest time.

Quick facts

What you'll learn

The obvious gain is twelve academic words you'll meet constantly in course books, lectures and IELTS reading passages. The less obvious gain is how these words behave in speech.

Three of them shift between noun and verb — research, export, estimate — and you'll hear the pairs side by side: "So we can have the verb…to estimate" and "the noun, an estimate." You'll also hear a useful register point made out loud: estimate is "a more formal way" of saying guess, and "It makes it sound like you have some knowledge… behind the guess." That is exactly the kind of distinction that separates an essay sentence from a spoken one.

You'll pick up collocations as they happen rather than from a list: a cost analysis, continuous assessment, financial affairs, financial irregularities, high finance, a distribution centre, the distribution of wealth, an area of natural beauty, income tax. You'll notice how one speaker introduces an antonym as a matter of course — import and export, "She works in imports and exports."

And because the conversations are genuinely unscripted, you get the hesitations, restarts and self-corrections real speakers make — including one speaker who says "legislature…legislation in fact" and repairs it mid-sentence. Following meaning through that mess is the listening skill you actually need in a seminar room.

In the workbook

The workbook for this unit contains the full transcript of everything you hear, including the definitions, the gapped example sentences and the conversations, so you can check any word you missed. Both review sections are written out too — the quick questions after words 1–6 and 7–12, with their answers.

After that there are four extra exercises:

• Exercise 1 — choose the correct form of the word: Analyse / Analysis of the samples shows they have started to grow, and five more.
• Exercise 2 — complete the gap with a word from the unit, first letter given: The s______ of the disease has not yet been found.
• Exercise 3 — a collocation matching task: which word goes with scientific / careful / chemical / data / detailed, and which with wide / remote / high-crime.
• Exercise 4 — more collocations, including financial with loss / ruin / advice / gain and income with and expenditure / tax.

Full answers are supplied for every exercise. This workbook is part of the Zapp! English all-in-one pack at €39, which includes the workbooks for every episode we've made.

Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39

Common questions

Is the audio free?

Yes. The English conversations are free to download. The workbook with the transcript and the four exercises comes with the paid pack.

Is this scripted or real English?

The conversations are unscripted — the speakers work out their examples as they go, which is why you hear repairs and false starts. The teaching sections that set up each task and give the answers are scripted so the instructions stay clear.

Do I need to be studying at university to use this?

No. The words here — financial, income, area, source, estimate — turn up in newspapers, at work and in everyday talk. The pack is aimed at academic study and exams like IELTS, but the vocabulary is broadly useful.

How should I use the repeat sections?

Say the word out loud after the recording rather than in your head. That's what the repetition step is there for: memory and pronunciation together.

What's in the rest of the pack?

The series teaches the 120 most useful words from the Academic Word List across the whole course, one unit at a time, always through real conversation.

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