Money Listening Practice: Spenders or Savers? (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: Ten speakers talk about spending and saving, from boring Christmas socks to plane tickets, in this 13-minute Level 2 listening episode about money.
Check your understanding
Four questions on what is said in the recording. Every answer is in the audio. No sign-up, nothing to buy.
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 2.15 is a 13½-minute recording of ten people talking about money in unscripted English. Four speakers say whether they are spenders or savers. Katie, Stuart and Sybil then discuss what they spend their money on, including the time Stuart worked in Hollywood. Finally Greg, Tom, Katie and Hannah say whether they are saving for anything at the moment.
The episode is built from three listening tasks. In the first, Jesse, Nicholas, Sandra and Ronny each answer the same question: are you a spender or a saver? One speaker says she used to spend without thinking and now hates counting every penny — "I would really love to be a spender again". Another explains that saving "it's just as good as making money to me", and would rather spend a few extra minutes hunting for a cheaper plane ticket than order the smoothie at a restaurant. A third is honest about being stuck between the two: "I'm...I'm caught in the middle".
The second task is a three-way conversation between Katie, Stuart and Sybil about where the money actually goes: food, art supplies, hard drives, rent, and above all travel. Katie's disbelieving "Fabulous restaurants?!" is worth listening for, as is Sybil's "That's me in a nutshell right there." The conversation then turns to a period spent working in Hollywood, where one of the speakers says image mattered more than a portfolio: "You had to look the part." He worked out that it was "like advertising" — know what your audience wants and give it to them. Sybil's verdict on that world: "Hollywood would spit me out pretty quick".
In the third task, Greg, Tom, Katie and Hannah say what they're saving for right now. Answers range from a bicycle for a son's birthday to a campervan, a sailing boat, debts, and a big family present that's still two years away.
Quick facts
Zapp! English Listening 2.15, Money, is a free English listening lesson at intermediate level (B1). It runs 13 minutes 36 seconds and has three listening tasks and ten speakers, with each task set and answered in the recording. The workbook, with the full transcript and extra exercises, is part of the €39 all-in-one pack.
| Episode | 2.15 |
| Pack | Zapp! English Listening 2 |
| Level | 2 |
| Topic | Money — spending, saving and what people can afford |
| Duration | 13 minutes 36 seconds |
| Voices | Ten speakers |
| Workbook | Included in the all-in-one pack (€39) |
What you'll learn
Zapp! English Listening 2.15 trains you to follow people who avoid a straight answer. You learn to hear how speakers place themselves between two options, as Sandra does with "caught in the middle" and Ronny with "somewhere down the middle", how "should" is used to admit something, and how to keep up with a fast three-way conversation full of hesitations.
The most useful language here is hedging. Almost nobody in this episode gives a straight answer. Instead you get "a bit of a saver", "a little bit of a both", "somewhere down the middle" and "caught in the middle" — a whole set of phrases for placing yourself between two options rather than picking one. Learning to hear these is what stops you mishearing an answer as a simple yes or no.
You'll also hear "should" doing emotional work. One speaker keeps circling back to it — "I should be", followed by a list of "really grown up things" she isn't actually saving for. That's the standard English way of admitting something without quite apologising for it, and it's worth copying.
Beyond that, this is practice in listening through hesitation. The false starts, the "erm"s and the mid-sentence corrections are all left in, because that's what real speech sounds like. The three tasks move from short monologues to a fast three-way conversation, where people finish each other's thoughts and agree in overlapping fragments. Each task ends with the answers, so you can check whether you caught the gist before you go back for detail.
Vocabulary from the workbook
The workbook glossary explains the words most likely to slow you down:
- conservative (adjective) – careful, spend less than is possible; used by a speaker on a fixed income
- nut (noun, informal) – a person who is crazy about something, as in "I'm a sort of a tech...nut"
- addicted (adjective) – needs something, cannot live without it, as in "we're addicted to travelling aren't we?"
- superseded (verb) – replaced, become more important than; in the Hollywood story, appearance superseded the portfolio
- portfolio (noun) – a collection of examples of your work that you show to get work
- unique (adjective) – different to everyone or everything else
- survive (verb) – live, stay alive; one host jokes he isn't saving, just "trying to survive"
- mortgages (noun) – the money you can borrow from the bank to buy a house
What's in the workbook
The Unit 15 workbook contains the full transcript of all three tasks, the task questions and the answers, so you can read exactly what was said once you've listened. The Extra Materials section adds six detail questions with answers — for example, why Nicholas asks for boring presents like socks at Christmas, which two things Ronny spends money on, whether Greg's son went to the concert last year, and whether Hannah is paying for the whole of her mother's holiday.
There's also a Getting the meaning from context exercise: five lines lifted straight from the recording with a word or phrase in bold, which you match to definitions. You'll work out afford, critical, in a nutshell, put money aside and grown up from the way the speakers use them, rather than from a dictionary. The glossary above rounds it off. As the workbook puts it: "You can spend money, but you can also spend time."
This workbook comes with the complete Zapp! English pack — every episode, every workbook, one price.
Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39
Common questions
What level is this episode?
Zapp! English Listening 2.15 is a Level 2 episode from the Zapp! English Listening 2 pack, which is intermediate (B1). The conversations are at natural speed, but each of the three tasks is short and its answers are given straight afterwards in the recording.
Are the conversations scripted?
The conversations in Zapp! English Listening 2.15 are unscripted: real people answering real questions about money. Only the teaching sections, which set up the tasks and give the answers, are scripted, so the instructions stay clear.
How long is the audio?
The audio for Zapp! English Listening 2.15 runs 13 minutes 36 seconds. That covers the three listening tasks and their answers, so you can do the whole unit in one sitting.
Is the audio free?
The audio for Zapp! English Listening 2.15 is free, and the English conversations are free to download. The workbook, with the transcript, the questions and the glossary, is not free: it is part of the paid all-in-one pack at €39.
What if I can't follow the fast conversation?
If the fast conversation in Zapp! English Listening 2.15 is hard to follow, listen for the gist first and check the answer. Then read the transcript in the workbook to see which words you missed. The overlapping three-way conversation in Task 2 is the hardest part, and it is meant to be.
Get this episode
To save the audio, right-click the MP3 link and choose Save link as.
Listen on
