Zapp! English Listening 2.2 - Living with People
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).
“So we’re sitting in the park.” That’s how this one opens, and within a minute Alec has decided what the worst thing about sharing a house is: “the worst problem is...other people, taking your food.” From there it moves through labelled shelves in the fridge, washing up liquid in the washing machine, a very polite note stuck on a door, and the resentment that builds when you feel like the only person in the house who ever buys toilet rolls. Thirteen minutes and forty-one seconds of unscripted English about living at close quarters.
What you’ll hear in this episode
There are three conversations. In the first, Katie talks to Kim and Alec about what goes wrong when you share a house. Alec starts with food theft; Kim agrees, and admits she is “very protective, of my food”. Then Kim makes a point that shifts the whole conversation: “everybody has, their own...level, of tidiness” and “it’s very difficult to find housemates whose level matches your own”. Someone too clean is a problem too — “Too much pressure,” as Kim puts it. Noise comes third, with a fairly precise limit: loud music is fine, “but not past, midnight”.
The second conversation moves next door, to neighbours. One of the speakers describes a flat where the people through the bedroom wall changed every week because it was a holiday let — and Katie supplies the missing adjective before he can: “Drunk.” Then the story flips, and it’s their music that earns a polite note in the morning. There’s also a wooden floor upstairs, and someone pacing on it all day in what certainly sound like high heels.
In the third, Katie and Clare try to agree on the three most important questions to ask a potential housemate. Clare wants proof of income, then cleanliness — though she knows the limits of asking: “nobody is going to say, Oh I’m really dirty and messy.” On noise she is firm: “there’s no compromise with this.” They end up with four questions and have to cut one.
Quick facts
| Episode | Zapp! English Listening 2.2 – Living with People |
| Pack | Listening 2 |
| Level | 2 |
| Duration | 13 minutes 41 seconds |
| Recorded | in a park |
| Speakers heard | Katie, Kim, Alec, Clare |
| Workbook | Included in the all-in-one pack (€39) |
What you’ll learn
This is a good episode for hearing how English speakers soften and hedge an opinion instead of stating it flatly. Listen to how often “I think” arrives at the front, the middle or the end of a sentence: “I think that’s very common in student houses, isn’t it?”, “a lot of people don’t really know their neighbours very well. I think.” Notice too how much agreement is done with almost no words at all — “Mmm”, “Yeah”, “Absolutely” — and how Katie’s repeated “Yes, yes, yes” keeps the other speakers talking.
The third conversation gives you something more structured: direct questions embedded in a discussion. “What do you do?”, “How much do you earn?”, “Do you smoke?”, “Are you noisy or not?” You’ll hear how these blunt questions get wrapped in politeness before they’re said out loud, and how a speaker counts and re-counts her own points — “In fact we’ve got four, because we also...”
There’s also real practice in following an unfinished thought. Kim interrupts herself with “It’s just come...come back to me now” before remembering the toilet rolls. Nobody in these conversations speaks in complete sentences, and learning to hear meaning through the restarts is the skill being trained.
Vocabulary from the workbook
The workbook glossary explains the words that carry the stories:
- labels (noun) – things that we put on something to tell us what it is or its name; used when the conversation turns to named shelves in a shared fridge.
- washing up liquid (noun) – the liquid we use to clean dishes and plates; the wrong liquid to put in a washing machine, as one story makes clear.
- toilet rolls (noun) – bathroom tissue; “Toilet rolls. That was always a big problem.”
- high heeled shoes (noun) – shoes that make a person tall because the heel, the part under the foot at the back, is high, worn by women; the clue to who lives upstairs.
- a compromise (noun) – a situation where two people both change their ideas a little bit so that they can solve a problem or stop an argument, they both understand they cannot have exactly what they want.
What’s in the workbook
The Unit 2 eBook takes you through the three conversations as Listening Tasks 1, 2 and 3, each with a question to answer before you listen and a short answer key afterwards. Task 1 asks you to predict what can go wrong when you share a house, then check your ideas against ours. Task 2 asks whether the neighbour stories are all negative (the answer key is blunt about it). Task 3 asks you to pick the three most important questions to ask a housemate before you hear what Katie and Clare choose.
The Extra Materials add six comprehension questions with answers — including why the neighbours changed every week and why the person upstairs is assumed to be a woman — plus a guess-from-context exercise on rare, stuff, evidence, key and messy, taken straight from the lines where they were said. Full transcripts and the vocabulary glossary are included.
Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39
Common questions
Is the audio scripted?
The conversations are completely unscripted — that’s why people interrupt themselves and finish each other’s sentences. The teaching sections that set up each task and give the answers are scripted, so the instructions stay clear.
Is Level 2 right for me?
Level 2 suits learners who can follow a conversation but still lose the thread when several people speak at once. Here you get two three-way conversations and one pair conversation, so you can build up to the busier audio.
Do I need the workbook to use the episode?
No — the English conversations are free to download and listen to. The workbook is what turns listening into practice: prediction tasks, answer keys, transcripts and the vocabulary work.
How do I get the workbook?
It comes with the Zapp! English all-in-one pack at €39, which includes the workbooks for every episode across all our courses.
What if I can’t catch every word?
You’re not meant to on the first listen. Use the task question as your goal, listen for that, then check the transcript to see what you missed.
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