Zapp! English Colloquial 2.12 - Computers & Technology

Katie opens this one with a small lie. She tells Clare they're going to talk about her favourite topic, and Clare's reaction is instant: "Oh no it's not computers!" The topic is computers and technology, and there are four expressions to guess. Clare gets the first two straight away, has honestly never heard the third, and then hits a very familiar wall: "Oh Katie, why do you ask me things that I don't know how to explain?" Nine expressions, two conversations, no rehearsal.

What you'll hear in this episode

The episode is built around two guessing games. In the first, Katie describes an expression and Clare tries to name it. "Cutting edge" and "on the same wavelength" come easily — and Katie points out that guessing the second one proves the point. Silver surfer is new to Clare: "Ah I've never heard this one before." She works out why silver is used for older people, connects it to grey hair, and offers a related phrase of her own — "a silver fox" for a good-looking older man. Then comes to blow a fuse, which sends them into a genuine detour about what a fuse actually does before Katie explains it and Clare admits the only thing that really sets her off is bad driving at a roundabout.

The second conversation is with Tom, who is told it's his favourite topic too. He guesses nerd immediately, describes someone who thinks about nothing else — then stops mid-sentence: "ooh that sounds like me!" Two minutes later he's insisting "I'm not a nerd or a geek." He tries "Like a whizz kid" before landing on geek, and asks a question learners often want answered: "is geek worse than nerd?" There's also to boot up, all singing all dancing — "You can fly a spacecraft with it" — and to push someone's buttons, where Tom immediately flags that there are two contexts, one of which Katie says she wasn't thinking of.

Quick facts

What you'll learn

The useful pattern here is that English keeps borrowing from machines to describe people. A fuse blows, so a person blows a fuse. Radios share a wavelength, so two people agree. Machines have buttons, so somebody who annoys you pushes yours. Once you see the transfer, the meanings stop being arbitrary.

You'll also hear how close relatives get separated. Clare's first guess is "to have a short fuse", which isn't the answer Katie wanted — and the two of them work out the difference on the spot: a short fuse describes your character in general, while blowing a fuse is a single moment of anger. Katie sums it up neatly: if you have a short fuse, you'll blow your fuse very often. That kind of live repair is exactly what textbooks skip.

There's usage information too. Tom explains that boot up now sounds technical — something he'd say to a programmer, and a word that was used far more in the nineteen nineties. And Tom's warning about push my buttons having a second, sexual reading is the sort of thing you want to know before you use a phrase at work.

After each conversation, a Meaning and Pronunciation task asks you the meaning, gives the answer, then gives a model sentence to repeat after the beep.

The expressions covered

• on the same wavelength (1) – think about something in the same way, to understand another person's opinions because they are the same as yours
• a silver surfer (1) – an older person who uses the internet
• cutting edge (1) – technology that is very new
• to blow a fuse (1) – to get very angry very quickly
• to push someone's buttons (1) – to do things that you know will make someone angry
• a geek (2) – a person who is very interested in computers and other people think is boring because of this
• a nerd (2) – a person who is very interested in computers and other people think is boring because of this, may also be unfashionable
• to boot up (1) – to turn on the computer and make it ready to work
• all singing all dancing (1) – can do lots of different things, has all the latest features, very advanced

What's in the workbook

The workbook for this unit contains the full transcript of both conversations, so you can check anything you missed — including the parts where Katie and Clare talk over each other.

The glossary grades each expression 1, 2 or 3 for how informal it is. Level 1 is safe in most situations; level 2 is for people you know well; level 3 comes with the warning not to use it with your mother-in-law. Here, geek and nerd are both marked 2, and the rest are 1 — useful when you're deciding what's safe to say at work.

There are two written exercises with answers. Practice Exercise 1 gives you six sentences with a broken idiom in each — "grey surfers", "pull my buttons", "break my fuse" — and asks you to correct them. Practice Exercise 2 is a matching task: six sentence halves, six endings, including "She will blow…" and "My computer…".

The workbook is part of the Zapp! English all-in-one pack, which covers every episode for €39.

Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39

Common questions

Is the audio scripted?

The conversations are completely unscripted — Clare and Tom don't know what's coming. The teaching sections that set up the tasks and give the answers are scripted, so the instructions stay clear.

Is "geek" or "nerd" an insult?

Tom asks Katie the same thing. She says she thinks they're fairly similar. Both are graded 2 in the glossary: informal, best used with people you know well.

What's the difference between blowing a fuse and having a short fuse?

Blowing a fuse is one sudden explosion of anger. Having a short fuse describes your character — you're the kind of person who blows a fuse often.

Do I need the workbook to follow the audio?

No. The audio works on its own and is free. The workbook adds the transcript, the graded glossary and the two written exercises with answers.

Is "boot up" still used?

Tom says he'd use it in a technical or work context, but that it was used a lot more in the nineteen nineties.

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