Describing Appearance: English Listening Practice (Audio)
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).
In this episode: Eight speakers talk about looks, and four of them describe their own faces, hair and height. Free English listening audio, level 2.
Check your understanding
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The workbook for this episode has more practice, with answers, and the full transcript. See what’s in the workbook
What you'll hear in this episode
Zapp! English Listening 2.9 is a 14-minute recording of people talking about appearance in unscripted English. Katie, Alec and Kim discuss whether appearance is important; Mike, Sybil, Greg and William each describe their own height, build, hair and age; and Sybil and Tom say what they find attractive in other people. Before each description you hear only the voice and guess what the person looks like.
We open with a three-way conversation. Katie tells the other two they "both look very lovely" and asks whether appearance matters. Alec thinks that in society appearance is "too important", and that too much time goes on worrying about it; he blames the media, then undercuts himself with the moustache line. Kim says things are changing — it's becoming more socially acceptable for men to care too, maybe "go to the beautician once in a while" or "have a fake tan". Katie confesses the gap between what she says and what she does: "Oh I've got nothing to wear! What shall I wear?"
Then four speakers describe themselves, one at a time: Mike, Sybil, Greg and William. You hear heights in feet and in centimetres, hair going white or grey, wrinkles, a bald head, a "heavily built" build, and two separate confessions about having a big nose. One speaker admits to very ugly feet and compares them, unfavourably, to "all the beautiful little feet I see around me in Thailand".
The last task is about attraction. Sybil starts with the eyes — "the gateway to the...the soul" — then teeth, smiles, and a style that is "absolutely not, like you're going to see in a...in an advertisement in a magazine". Tom says there isn't one particular type he's drawn to, and signs off with "I love all girls. They're wonderful!"
Quick facts
Zapp! English Listening 2.9, Describing Appearance, is a free English listening lesson at intermediate level (B1). It runs 14 minutes 03 seconds and has three listening tasks: a conversation about whether appearance matters, four people describing themselves, and two people saying what they find attractive. The workbook, with the full transcript and extra exercises, is part of the €39 all-in-one pack.
| Episode | Zapp! English Listening 2.9 - Describing Appearance |
| Pack | Listening 2 |
| Level | 2 |
| Duration | 14 minutes 03 seconds |
| Audio | Free to download |
| Workbook | Included in the all-in-one pack (€39) |
What you'll learn
Zapp! English Listening 2.9 trains you to follow opinions and to catch exact details. In the first task you work out what three people really think about appearance; in the second you listen for ages, heights and colours, with heights given both in feet and in centimetres. It also gives you five appearance words in context: fake, tan, tattoos, lean and ponytail.
This unit trains two different kinds of listening. In task 1 you listen for gist and opinion: do the speakers care about appearance, and do they think they should? The answer is more layered than yes or no, and you have to hold two ideas at once. In task 2 you listen for detail — numbers, colours, ages — and detail is where measurement systems collide. One speaker gives "about five foot seven", another "one metre eighty two, centimetres", and Greg says "about six...th...two, which translates to, about a hundred and eighty six centimetres". Learning to catch both systems in the same episode is genuinely useful.
You'll also hear how much hedging English speakers use about their own bodies. "I am in my early forties. OK, to be exact forty two." "I'm quite thin." "I wouldn't say I'm muscular." And you'll hear live self-correction, the kind that gets edited out of scripted material: "a...blue, no grey...grey eyes. Greyish green." Once you expect these repairs, they stop derailing you.
The workbook adds extra listening questions that force you back into the audio for specifics — how many people mention their nose, how old the youngest speaker is, whether Sybil prefers long or short hair on a man.
Vocabulary from this episode
The glossary in the workbook covers five words you'll hear in context:
- fake (adjective) – not real, as in the fake tan Kim mentions
- tan (noun) – what you get when your skin goes a darker colour from the sun
- tattoos (noun) – permanent ink marks and pictures on the skin, one of the things Katie lists
- lean (adjective) – with very little fat; Sybil says simply, "Lean is nice"
- ponytail (noun) – when long hair is tied together at the back of the head; Sybil admits "that just does something to me"
What's in the workbook
The workbook for this unit follows the audio task by task. Each of the three listening tasks comes with pre-listening questions to get you thinking about your own answers first, the full transcript of what was actually said — hesitations, half-finished words and all — and an answer key that explains the reasoning rather than just marking you right or wrong.
After that there are Extra Materials. The extra listening section sends you back to the audio for detail: which topics the first three speakers mention, how many people complain about their nose, whether Tom's preferences have always been consistent. The vocabulary section is a guessing-from-context exercise: you look at four bold phrases in real lines from the transcript — "puts pressure on", "wrinkles", "ginger" and "in good condition" — decide whether each is a noun, adjective or phrase, and then match it to a definition. Answers are at the back, with the transcript lines repeated so you can see exactly why.
This workbook is part of the Zapp! English all-in-one pack, which covers every episode we've made, for €39.
Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39
Common questions
Is the audio scripted?
The conversations in Zapp! English Listening 2.9 are not scripted, which is why you hear a joke about a moustache and a speaker who miscounts the months to his own birthday. Only the teaching sections, which set up each listening task and give the answers, are scripted, so the instructions stay clear.
Do I need the workbook to use the audio?
You do not need the workbook to use the audio of Zapp! English Listening 2.9. The audio is free and works on its own. The workbook, part of the €39 all-in-one pack, adds the full transcript, the extra questions and the vocabulary exercises.
How hard is this episode?
Zapp! English Listening 2.9 is a Level 2 episode, which is intermediate (B1), and it runs 14 minutes 03 seconds. The self-descriptions in the second task are slow and clear. The first task, with three people talking over each other, is the harder part.
Can you really guess someone's appearance from their voice?
Guessing what someone looks like from their voice is the experiment in the second task of Zapp! English Listening 2.9. You hear each voice first, then the person's own description. The recording is honest about the result: only you know whether your guesses were right.
What will I be able to say afterwards?
After Zapp! English Listening 2.9 you will have reviewed the everyday vocabulary for describing height, build, hair, eyes and age. You will also have heard how native speakers hedge when they describe themselves, with words such as quite, about and a bit.
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