Zapp! English Listening 2.12 - Computers
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).
Sandra sums up the whole topic in one sentence: "I have a love-hate relationship with my computer because I can’t do without it, but it doesn’t do what I want it to do." Ronny puts it more cheerfully — "And I Google the world." In this episode of Zapp! English Listening 2 we use computers as an excuse to work on your listening, because it is one of the few subjects almost every conversation eventually touches. Six voices, three listening tasks, and one very modern confession about checking email at four in the morning.
What you’ll hear in this episode
The episode opens with three short answers to the same hidden question — your job is to work out what the question was. Nicholas talks about internet usage being measured by the month, day and year, an online business selling tea imported from China, and free long-distance calls on Skype. Sandra says people always told her to "Think like a computer", which she finds impossible. Ronny explains how he downloads and burns DVDs and has run a cable to his television.
Then Katie sits down with Tom, introducing him as "a bit of a computer clever clogs". Tom immediately protests: "Oooh I don’t think I’m that good!" Katie says she only does the ordinary things — emailing, word processing, surfing the internet — and admits she ends up shouting and swearing at her machine. Two days without internet, she says, "nearly killed me". Tom agrees the habit is hard to break: "Yeah, it’s addictive." He describes a group of five or six girls sitting at a table for about forty-five minutes on their phones — "And they didn’t talk to each other." His solution is to "throw them all away and become farmers".
In the third conversation Katie warns Clare that they are about to discuss "something that I know, you are not actually…that interested in". Clare argues the technology is great but the way we use it is not, and predicts that "it’s inevitable that in the future our best friend will be our computer". Katie: "Oh I hope not." Clare: "I think that’s where we’re headed."
Quick facts
| Episode | 2.12 — Computers |
| Pack | Zapp! English Listening 2 |
| Level | 2 |
| Length | 15 minutes 42 seconds |
| Voices you’ll hear | Nicholas, Sandra, Ronny, Katie, Tom, Clare |
| Workbook | Included in the all-in-one pack |
What you’ll learn
Task 1 trains a skill you use constantly in real life: working out what question someone is answering when you only catch the second half of the exchange. Three speakers, three very different answers, one question — and the answer turns out to be simply what people use computers for.
Task 2 asks you to judge, not just decode. Both speakers play down their own ability, so you have to listen past the modesty for the evidence: thirteen or fourteen years of work, web design and development, and Katie's own list of "emailing, word processing…looking at pictures, surfing the internet".
Task 3 is prediction work. You are given two possible futures — computers driving cars, and computers ordering your shopping without being told — and you listen to find out which one actually comes up. Katie describes a fridge that knows how much milk you use and orders it over the internet; Clare's reaction, "Really?", is the giveaway.
Throughout, this is unedited natural speech: false starts, half-finished sentences, "erm" and "mmm" as thinking time, and agreement signals stacked on top of each other. Learning to hear the meaning through all of that is the real point of the unit.
Vocabulary from the workbook
The glossary explains five words as they occur in the conversations:
- dependent (adjective) – dependent on something means needing something. Sandra: "I’m so dependent on it".
- anthropology (noun) – the study of people and culture. Mentioned in the second conversation as the background that made the internet feel like a doorway to the world.
- addictive (adjective) – when something is addictive you cannot stop doing it or having it. Tom’s one-word verdict on the internet.
- inevitable (adjective) – something that is going to happen, we cannot stop it. Clare’s word for our future friendship with our computers.
- manually (adverb) – with your hands, not using a machine. Clare, imagining life without email.
The extra materials add four expressions to guess from context: keeping in touch (contacting, communicating with), ex-pat (someone who left their home country and lives in another country), clever clogs (an informal way to say that someone knows a lot about something) and convenient (easy to do, not difficult or taking a lot of time).
The workbook
The workbook for this unit contains the three listening tasks with their instructions and answers, and the full transcript of all three conversations, so you can go back and see exactly which words were swallowed or run together.
After the summary there are extra listening questions: how many of the first three speakers use a computer for emailing, phone calls and pictures; two true-or-false statements about the second conversation (including whether Tom wanted a computer career for the money — he didn’t, he wanted work he could do anywhere); and two comprehension questions on Clare, one asking why she thinks we use technology incorrectly. Then comes the vocabulary-from-context exercise, where you decide the word class of four bolded items and match them to definitions, followed by the answer key and the glossary.
Every unit in Listening 2 is built the same way, and the whole set comes with the pack for €39.
Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39
Frequently asked questions
What level is this episode?
It’s level 2 in the Zapp! English Listening series, so the tasks are short and clearly signposted, but the speech itself is completely natural.
Is the audio scripted?
The English conversations are unscripted — Nicholas, Sandra, Ronny, Katie, Tom and Clare are simply talking. The teaching sections that set up each task and give the answers are scripted, so the instructions stay clear.
How long is it?
15 minutes 42 seconds, including the three tasks and their answers.
Do I need the workbook?
You can listen for free without it. The workbook gives you the transcript, the answers and the vocabulary work, which is where most of the learning happens on a second pass.
What if I can’t follow the first speaker?
That’s normal. Play the segment again before you look at the transcript — Task 1 only asks you to identify the question, not to catch every word.
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