Zapp! English Listening 2.7: In Town, Grids and Trams

A hundred metres of trees, a few recycling bins, then a pedestrian crossing "which is quite dangerous, because people don't stop when you try and cross the road there". That is how one of our speakers describes the short walk to the metro, and it is exactly the kind of ordinary, slightly rambling English you have to follow when someone gives you directions in real life. This episode takes you through three unscripted recordings about towns: getting around one, imagining a better one, and leaving one behind.

What you'll hear in this episode

The unit opens with two short journey descriptions. One speaker walks through her route from her flat to work – turn left, a set of traffic lights, a pedestrian crossing, straight on for thirty seconds, another left. The second is longer and messier, with a giant free car park, recycling bins for household waste, a junction, a bus stop and finally an escalator down into the metro. Both are people thinking aloud, correcting themselves mid-sentence.

Then Katie and Clare sit down to design the perfect town. Clare says the place she lives is wonderful because "everything is accessible here", but when Katie hands her a blank map she immediately rejects the grid: "for me the perfect town needs to have character", and "I wouldn't want it to be too structured". Katie counters that grids make it easy to find your way around; Clare argues that getting lost is part of the pleasure, and that "I want to visit a town because it's interesting". They agree that English towns "they're all starting to look the same", with the same out-of-town shopping centres and the same shops in the same places. Katie wants trams. Clare is sceptical, then comes round – "if you did see one in a town now, it's something a little bit different".

The final conversation compares life in a big coastal city with growing up in a small, green, flat village of five thousand people near Oxford. Asked whether the two places have anything in common at all, the answer is a laugh and "well people live in both!"

Quick facts

Episode	Zapp! English Listening 2.7 – In Town
Episode number	2.7
Pack	Listening 2
Level	2
Duration	12 minutes 57 seconds
Workbook	Included in the all-in-one pack (€39)

What you'll learn

The first task is pure visualisation practice: you are asked to picture the route as you hear it, which forces you to process prepositions and sequencing words in real time – turn left, cross over at, opposite that, carry on about another hundred metres, take a right. Notice how often the speakers repeat and repair themselves: "the main...path...pavement". That self-correction is normal, and learning to hold on through it is a listening skill in itself.

The second conversation gives you the language of opinion and preference: I'd prefer more independent shops, something really important for me would be, on the other hand. Katie's summary – "I want parks, I want nice shops, I want good transport" – is a small lesson in how English speakers list wants by repeating the whole structure rather than compressing it.

You will also pick up the vocabulary of a town without studying a word list: traffic lights, pedestrian crossing, crossroads, junction, bus stop, recycling bins, shopping mall, open spaces, leisure activities, blocks of flats, detached houses. And you get a genuinely useful observation about British life at the end: "you spend eighty percent of your life on the beach, or in the parks" in a warm climate, but "in England where it rains you need a nice house".

Vocabulary from the workbook

character (noun) – the feeling of a place, what makes it interesting and different. Clare uses it as her main criterion for a good town, and again when she says a place that looks like everywhere else will attract nobody.
structured (adjective) – organised in a clear way so that you can see how one part connects to another part. This is the word she reaches for when rejecting grid-planned streets.

What's in the workbook

The PDF workbook for Unit 7 contains the full transcript of all three recordings, so you can go back and see exactly where you lost the thread. Each listening task comes with its own short answer page.

After the main unit there are extra listening questions: name two things both speakers mention in their journey descriptions (answer: traffic lights and a zebra crossing), name something Clare doesn't want her town to be, decide whether she thinks trams are good or bad and why, list three things said about the village, and explain why people in the UK care so much about their houses.

There is also a guessing-from-context exercise. Four words are pulled from the transcript in bold – household waste, accessible, rural and cosmopolitan – and you decide the word class before matching each one to a definition: rubbish, things we throw away and don't use; easy to get to or use; like or of the countryside; belonging to a big city, usual for a big city. A short glossary finishes the unit.

The audio is free. The workbook is part of the all-in-one pack at €39, which covers every episode.

Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39

Common questions

Is the audio scripted?

The conversations are unscripted – real hesitations, real interruptions, real changes of mind. The teaching sections that set up each task and give the answers are scripted, so the instructions stay clear.

What level is this episode?

Level 2, from the Listening 2 pack. It runs 12 minutes 57 seconds.

Do I need the workbook?

No – you can listen for free. The workbook adds the transcript, the answers, the extra questions and the vocabulary work.

What if the speakers go too fast?

Read the transcript afterwards and find the exact point where you dropped out. Most of the time it is a self-correction, not a hard word.

How do I get the workbook?

It comes with the all-in-one pack at €39, along with the workbooks for every other episode.

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