Zapp! English Listening 2.1 - Jobs & Work
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).
"Are we working?" Tom asks, about thirty seconds into a conversation about work. Katie decides that yes, they probably are. What follows is one of the most honest talks we've recorded about working from home: the freedom to start when you like and wear what you like, and the slow realisation that you haven't spoken to another human being all day. Before that, two other speakers answer three simple questions about their jobs — and you have to work out what the questions were.
What you'll hear in this episode
The unit opens with a listening puzzle. Two speakers, Mike and Greg, each talk for a minute or so, and your job is to guess the questions they were asked. One teaches business subjects — marketing, finance, business law — plus a course on environmental problems, and says of it: "I think it is actually the greatest job I've ever had." The detail he loves is "the spark of recognition" on a student's face. The other organises production for fairtrade products: bags, clothing, jewellery, soap. Sometimes the production is already organised; sometimes he buys the supplies himself and checks the tailor is making it right.
Then the same two describe what's difficult. Greg talks about time zones, the constant demand for new samples, and finding customers when most of his time goes on producing rather than selling — "frustrating and time consuming". Mike talks about motivating students who aren't interested yet.
The last section is Katie and Tom in conversation. One of them has worked from home for years, in Thailand, Spain and England "on and off"; the other only for the last year or so, and is still enjoying it — "I actually quite like working in my pyjamas." That leads to a joke about working in your underwear and a fast retraction: "No, I don't! I didn't say that." Underneath the laughing there's a real problem: "I miss human contact," and it's "difficult to stop work" when work is in the building you live in.
Quick facts
| Episode | Zapp! English Listening 2.1 – Jobs & Work |
| Pack | Listening 2 |
| Level | 2 |
| Duration | 14 minutes 34 seconds |
| Audio | Free |
| Workbook | Included in the all-in-one pack (€39) |
What you'll learn
The first task trains a skill that textbooks rarely touch: reconstructing the question from the answer. In real life you often join a conversation halfway through, and you work out what was asked from what people say. Here the answers are long and unedited, so you have to hold the whole turn in your head before you decide.
You'll also get a lot of practice with how English speakers hesitate and restart. Greg's speech is full of half-finished words and self-corrections — "a...a company", "checking in on s...on producers" — and learning to hear through that noise is what makes natural speech understandable. Mike stacks three questions in a row when he describes his difficulty, which is a very common way of explaining a problem out loud.
The Katie and Tom section teaches the language of advantages and disadvantages without the textbook phrasing: "you set your own hours", "you don't have to waste time travelling", and then the turn towards "becoming more obvious and more apparent over time". You'll also hear the second conditional used naturally in a hypothetical question and answer, ending with "If I had the choice, I would...choose a mixture."
Vocabulary from the workbook
- fairtrade (noun) – treating workers and companies from poorer countries fairly. This is how Greg describes the products he organises production for.
- samples (noun) – examples of work to look at or test. Greg's customers always want new ones, before the old ones have sold.
- motivating (adjective) – something that makes someone feel they are interested and really want to do something. Mike's hardest task with students.
- initial (adjective) – first, beginning. Used about the early advantages of working from home.
- freelance (adjective) – work that is done by someone who does not have a permanent or fixed job. It appears just before the joke about working in your underwear.
What's in the workbook
The workbook takes you through four listening tasks with the question set before each one, then the answers: guess the two questions in task 1; decide which group of people each speaker finds difficult in task 2; work out whether Greg stays in one place all day in task 3; and list the advantages and disadvantages Katie and Tom actually mention in task 4. Task 4 also pre-teaches separate, to separate and separation before you hear the conversation, because that idea runs through the whole discussion.
After the main unit there are extra materials: seven true-or-false statements covering all four listenings, with explanations rather than bare answers — for example, Greg doesn't hate weekend work, he says it's OK. Then a Getting the meaning from context exercise on five expressions taken straight from the audio, including convey, the spark of recognition, varied, time consuming and on and off: first decide the word class, then match the meaning. The full transcript is there so you can check anything you missed.
Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39
Common questions
Is the audio scripted?
The conversations aren't. Mike, Greg, Katie and Tom are all speaking spontaneously, with the hesitations and false starts that come with that. The teaching sections that set up each task and give the answers are scripted, so the instructions stay clear.
Do I need the workbook to follow the audio?
No — the audio works on its own, and it's free. The workbook is where you check your answers, do the extra true-or-false questions and the vocabulary matching, and read the transcript.
Is level 2 right for me?
This is a Level 2 listening unit. If you can follow the topic of a conversation but lose individual words when people speak quickly, this is the right kind of practice.
What if I can't catch everything the first time?
Good. Listen again before you look at the answers, then read the transcript to see exactly which word tripped you up. That comparison is where most of the learning happens.
Where do I get the workbooks for the other episodes?
They come together in the all-in-one pack at €39, which covers every episode rather than this one unit.
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