Jobs and Responsibility: 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: Our speakers weigh up being a performer, captain, leader or politician — and nobody wants the responsibility. Unscripted level 2 English with a workbook.
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 2.17 is a 15½-minute recording of five people talking about jobs and roles in unscripted English. Nicholas and Ronny are asked about four roles: performer, captain, patient and politician. Tom compares a captain with an employer and a politician with a criminal. Then Katie and Hannah discuss whether they would want to be an owner, a professional, a leader or a captain.
We asked people which kinds of people they have been or would like to be: a performer, a captain, a patient or a politician. Nicholas talks about performing as a child, including a part as one of the dancing pirates in Peter Pan, and about a grandfather's verdict afterwards — "I was a terrible dancer". He is much more serious about politics: "I'm very passionate about change", he says, because to really change something you have to be on the political side of it.
Ronny takes the opposite line. Performing, in her view, needs a certain ego she doesn't have, and being a politician is "absolutely not" an option: "that takes about the same ego as a performer", she says, "but maybe with less ethics".
Tom then compares pairs of jobs. A captain and an employer? "they're both...kind of bosses, they're in charge of people". A politician and a criminal? He notes that "sometimes politicians end up in prison, because they have...been corrupt", and that criminals are often former politicians.
The longest conversation is between Katie and Hannah, who has just come home from work and says she is "Very tired indeed." They work through owner, professional, leader and captain. Hannah would love to be a professional windsurfer; she decides she'd make a bad property owner — "So I'd be a terrible owner" — and would rather "own a dog". Neither of them wants to lead anything. Asked which she'd choose, Katie answers "probably none of them".
Quick facts
Zapp! English Listening 2.17, Professions and Kinds of People, is a free English listening lesson at intermediate level (B1). It runs 15 minutes 38 seconds and has three listening tasks and five 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 | 2.17 |
| Pack | Listening 2 |
| Level | 2 |
| Duration | 15 minutes 38 seconds |
| Topic | Professions and kinds of people |
| Workbook | Included in the all-in-one pack (€39) |
What you'll learn
Zapp! English Listening 2.17 trains you to follow people who are thinking aloud about a broad question. You hear how speakers narrow a general word such as "owner" or "captain" to one clear example, how hedges like "kind of" and "to some extent" soften an opinion, and how the key word "responsibility", checked before the last conversation, comes back again and again.
The useful thing about these four words is how general they are, and both speakers say so out loud: "Wow. OK, they are quite general." You'll hear how English speakers narrow a vague word down in real time — owner becomes an owner of a restaurant, then of property, then of a dog; captain moves from a ship to a rugby, football, netball or handball team. That is a skill you can copy directly when you're asked an open question and need thinking time.
You'll also hear plenty of hedging: kind of, to some extent, I suppose, I was thinking more of.... These are the words that make an opinion sound reasonable rather than absolute, and they're easy to miss because they're unstressed.
There's also a short teaching step around one key word. Before the main conversation we check responsibility — what you have when it's your job to make sure something is done, and done correctly — and then you hear it used again and again, including Hannah's summary of the word leader: "the word leader to me...says, responsibility responsibility". Listen for how she and Katie build the same argument in different words: too much stress, too much worry, "Too many sleepless nights."
Vocabulary from the workbook
- passionate (adjective) – cares a lot about something, it is very important to them. Nicholas uses it twice about change and about people.
- ego (noun) – what you think about yourself and how important you think you are. Ronny's reason for not wanting a stage.
- category (noun) – a group of things or people that are the same or similar in some way. Ronny puts being a patient into one.
- ethics (noun) – the rules people give themselves to decide what is right or wrong, fair or unfair. The punchline of Ronny's joke about politicians.
- corrupt (adjective) – does things that are dishonest so that they can get more money or power. From Tom on politicians and prison.
- former (adjective) – was before now, was, in the past. Tom on criminals and politicians.
What's in the workbook
The workbook takes you through the same three listening tasks you hear in the audio, each with the question set out before you listen and an answer key afterwards, so you can check what you understood without guessing. There's the vocabulary check on responsibility that comes before the main conversation, and a short true or false set in the Extra Materials — for example, whether Ronny liked being a patient, and whether Hannah is a professional windsurfer — with answers and brief explanations.
There's also a guessing from context exercise built from four real lines from the recording. You look at the words in bold, decide whether they're nouns, verbs, adjectives or phrases, and match them to definitions: in charge of, according to, renovating and clued up. The glossary above is included, and so is the full transcript, so anything you couldn't catch by ear you can read.
This workbook comes with every other one in the Listening 2 pack, and with the rest of the Zapp! English audio courses, in the all-in-one pack for €39.
Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39
Common questions
Do I need the workbook to follow the audio?
You do not need the workbook to follow Zapp! English Listening 2.17. The audio is free and works on its own, because each task is set and answered in the recording. The workbook, part of the €39 all-in-one pack, adds the full transcript, the extra exercises and the vocabulary definitions.
Are these conversations scripted?
The conversations in Zapp! English Listening 2.17 are not scripted. Nicholas, Ronny, Tom, Katie and Hannah all speak spontaneously, so you hear real hesitations and self-corrections. Only the teaching sections, which set up each task and give the answers, are scripted, so the instructions stay clear.
What level is this episode?
Zapp! English Listening 2.17 is a Level 2 episode from the Listening 2 pack, which is intermediate level (B1). The recording runs 15 minutes 38 seconds, including the three listening tasks and their answers.
What should I listen for the second time?
On a second listen to Zapp! English Listening 2.17, notice how the speakers reinterpret a general word. "Captain" changes meaning in the middle of the conversation once sport comes up, from a ship to a team, and "owner" shifts from a restaurant to houses and then to a dog.
Which language can I use straight away?
The hedges that the speakers use in Zapp! English Listening 2.17 are language you can use straight away. "Kind of", "to some extent" and "I was thinking more of" let you answer a broad question honestly while you decide what you actually think.
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