Katie
Ask an English speaker whether they’d like to be a captain and you find out very quickly whether they know what a captain does. One of our speakers admits, cheerfully, “I have no idea what captains do or should do”, adding “I don’t believe I’ve ever met one”. Another pictures …
Listen nowZapp! English Listening Lesson 2.17 – Professions & Kinds of People
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 …
Listen nowZapp! English Listening 2.16 – Food (& Ingredients)
Katie asks two friends what they spend their money on, and Sybil answers by singing: “Money, money, money, makes the world go round”. A few minutes later someone explains why a three-hundred-pound pair of shoes is unthinkable even with the cash in the bank — “That’s half a plane ticket!” …
Katie asks Donnie how he is. “I’m feeling fine at the moment,” he says. “You won’t be by the time we’ve finished,” she replies. That sets the tone for this unit on illness: two unscripted English conversations about colds, coughs, upset stomachs and one broken elbow, followed by drills on …
Listen nowZapp! English Vocabulary & Pronunciation 2.20 – Illness / Sickness
Everyone has a supermarket grievance. In this episode one of the speakers admits to always ending up with the trolley “with the dodgy wheel”, so that pushing it up and down the aisles means “nearly run people over” or knocking things off the shelves. Someone else keeps their receipts so …
Listen nowZapp! English Vocabulary & Pronunciation MP3 3.30 – Shopping
Tom opens this one with a hint rather than a greeting: “It’s time for lunch.” Katie’s answer is “Not yet.” Lunch has to be earned — no food until he has guessed every colloquial expression she describes, and they are all about time. He gets as far as “Please!” before …
Nobody likes telling the boss there is a problem. So, as Annie points out, “Well people often use issues as a synonym for problems, don’t they?” — and suddenly the project has issues, and you will get it to them tomorrow. That small piece of office diplomacy is exactly why …
Alec has a problem with his new bedroom. “the whole room is exactly the length of me”, he says, so “my feet touch one wall…when I’m in bed. And my head touches the other”. He calls it manageable. That’s the tone of this episode: six people describing the rooms they …
Listen nowZapp! English Listening 2.11 – Things in the House
A foot in the water, and it was “absolutely lovely”. Then the sea took her out. Sybil is an experienced swimmer and a body surfer, and she still admits: “I should have known better, Katie, but I…I think I got a little ahead of myself.” This episode collects three conversations …
Happy New year! We’ve got some great news for you :-). It’s the start of a new year, and it’s the perfect time to start learning English! If you don’t have the time or money to go to traditional English classes, why not try our “self-study” lessons? You can listen …