Zapp! English Listening Audio 2.5 - DANGER!
Taught by Tom Wilkinson — Cambridge CELTA
Recorded and taught by a team of British and North American English teachers, based in Oxford (UK) and Barcelona (Spain).
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 about danger — one in the ocean, one in a rolling vehicle, and one on a sofa, where Katie and Tom cheerfully disagree about what to do in an earthquake.
What you'll hear in this episode
The first conversation is Sybil's. She went into the sea at a beach in Costa Rica without checking how the current was running, got carried out, and found the waves too irregular to body surf back in. She explains that "the traditional wisdom, is to go diagonal...out of the current" — and then how long and hard that fight actually was, including trying not to swallow salt water.
Sandra's story is longer and much stranger. She was driving a camper with a pop top when another car cut in front of her; she couldn't brake in time, the wheels started rocking, and the vehicle rolled three times down a hill. Her husband was thrown out through the open top. In the middle of it she is looking at her own body for blood and thinking "What a miracle!" — and she says afterwards that both of them felt "angels had been protecting us". There's a lovely small moment where she can't find the word and Katie supplies it: "Safety belts! Thank you, safety belts!"
The third conversation is Katie and Tom on two hypothetical disasters. Tom says a doorway is the safest place in an earthquake; Katie has read that "doorways are not the safest places to be" and explains drop, cover and hold on. Tom is unbothered: "It's like when they tell you to eat eggs, and then they tell you not to eat eggs." Katie's advice to listeners is more direct — "just so nobody is in an earthquake and blames us when they get squashed...go check yourselves".
Quick facts
| Episode | 2.5 |
| Pack | Listening 2 |
| Level | 2 |
| Duration | 14 minutes 35 seconds |
| Speakers | Four, with three accents: British, Canadian and American |
| Workbook | Included in the all-in-one pack (€39) |
What you'll learn
The main skill here is following a long, messy narrative told by someone who is remembering as they speak. Sandra's account is the best example in the whole pack of how real storytelling actually sounds: she restarts sentences, repeats "the...the...the", switches between past and present ("and as I'm rolling...I don't hear a sound"), and drops in her own thoughts as direct speech — "Are we going to go over?", "Oh boy", "What a miracle!". Learning to hear those quoted thoughts as thoughts, not as things said out loud, is a genuinely useful listening skill.
You'll also practise hearing sequence without connectors. Sybil tells you what happened before, during and after her swim mostly through tense choice — "I had not checked before" against "I got my foot in the water" — rather than through obvious signposting words.
The third conversation gives you something different: two speakers disagreeing politely. Watch how Tom accepts new information with a flat "OK" and "OK well I'll remember that", and how Katie softens a correction with "Well that's interesting, because...". Tom's explanation of the underwater car is also a small masterclass in explaining a process: "You need to open the window and let the water in", then wait, then open the door.
Vocabulary from the workbook
The glossary covers the words that carry the stories:
- current (noun) – the way the sea moves strongly in a certain direction, and the thing Sybil hadn't checked
- irregular (adjective) – in a way that is not organised or the same each time; her word for the waves
- traditional wisdom (phrase) – what people usually think or know, or have known for a long time
- diagonal (adjective) – for example going in the direction of bottom left to top right
- camper (noun) – a vehicle you can sleep in, similar to a truck but can have bed etc. in it
- brakes (nouns) – the things you use to stop a vehicle
- rolled (verb) – went over and over in a circle
- passed out (phrasal verb) – became unconscious
- steering wheel (noun) – the thing in the car you put your hands on to control direction
- whiplash (noun) – when you hurt yourself because your neck goes suddenly and quickly back and then forwards
In the workbook
The 14-page style workbook for this unit is built around three listening tasks with a single focus question each: did Sybil think the sea was dangerous when she went in, why does Sandra talk about angels, and does Tom's advice match yours? Task 3 asks you to answer the two danger questions yourself before you listen, so you're comparing your own answer with a native speaker's.
After that there are full transcripts of all three conversations, answer keys, and an extra materials section with six true/false statements — including whether Sandra knew about her neck injury on the day, and whether Tom is exactly right about earthquakes.
There's also a guessing-from-context exercise using three phrases from Sandra's story: wheels "rocking from one side to another", "What a miracle!", and a car "completely totalled". You decide the part of speech and the meaning, then match each to a definition. The vocabulary glossary above closes the unit.
This workbook comes with the Zapp! English all-in-one pack, which covers every episode across the listening and conversation series for €39.
Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39
Common questions
Is the audio scripted?
The conversations are unscripted — that's why Sandra loses the phrase "safety belts" and Sybil talks in half-finished sentences. The teaching sections that set up the tasks and give the answers are scripted, so the instructions stay clear.
Is Level 2 right for me?
This is Level 2 in the Listening 2 pack. Sandra's story is the hardest thing in the unit; if you can follow the shape of it with the transcript beside you, you're in the right place.
Do I need the workbook to use the audio?
No. The audio works alone, and it's free. The workbook gives you the transcripts, the answer keys and the vocabulary work, which is where most of the actual learning happens.
Which accents will I hear?
Four speakers with three accents: British, Canadian and American.
What if I don't understand Sandra the first time?
Good — nobody does. Listen for the focus question only, then read the transcript, then listen again. Tom's closing advice on danger, incidentally, is "Don't drive."
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