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Halloween Vocabulary and Pronunciation
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).
Ask an English speaker what scares them at Halloween and you might expect ghosts. In this recording you get wasps and cockroaches. Before that, we work through ten words and phrases you need at this time of year, from to give someone a fright to spooky, with a pause after each one so you can repeat it. Then Katie asks Tom the obvious question — "Do you believe in ghosts?" — and the answer is more complicated than yes or no.
What you'll hear in this episode
The first half is a guessing game. We describe a word and you try to name it before you hear the answer: what do you call all the bones of the body together, without any skin or flesh? What's the word for very, very scared? What do you call the small animal that flies at night? Each answer is then repeated inside a short example sentence — He dressed as a skeleton, I'm terrified of the dark, a haunted house — so you hear the word in use, not just in isolation.
The second half is an unscripted conversation between Katie and Tom about Halloween, and your task is to listen out for the words you have just practised. Katie sets the scene by pointing out that they aren't "sitting anywhere very spooky at the moment", unlike England in October, which would be "dark and wet and cold".
One of the hosts admits that being rational about ghosts stops working in a frightening location, and describes a night spent in an old derelict hotel at the top of a mountain in Cambodia, fully expecting to see one. One of the speakers used to hold annual Halloween parties with skeletons, spiders, bats and pumpkins around the house, dressed as a witch, with a friend who came as Dracula. There's trick or treat with a white sheet for a costume, and then the real fears: one host is terrified of wasps, which "horrify" them, the other of cockroaches. As Katie sums it up: "no ghosts, no ghouls, no Draculas just insects over here we're scared of."
Quick facts
| Episode | Halloween Vocabulary and Pronunciation |
| Pack | Halloween |
| Duration | 7 minutes 52 seconds |
| Speakers | Katie and Tom |
| Workbook | Free download |
What you'll learn
The main language point here is that several of these words work in two different patterns, and learners regularly mix them up. You can scare someone — "You scared me!" — or you can be scared of something — "I'm scared of spiders." The same double life applies to frightened and terrified: "You frightened me" versus "I'm frightened of spiders", "That movie terrified me" versus "I'm terrified of the dark." We drill both forms so the preposition of attaches itself to the right pattern in your head.
You'll also work on the noun and adjective pairs that go with a haunted house: a ghost at a house makes the house haunted; a place that feels strange and a bit scary is spooky. And you'll practise the pronunciation of words learners often flatten — skeleton, costume, pumpkin — by repeating them after a native speaker rather than reading them off a page.
The conversation then gives you the listening half of the job. Both speakers hesitate, restart and trail off mid-sentence, exactly as people do in real speech, and you'll hear how a question like "what are you frightened of?" gets answered with a single word — "Wasps" — and a laugh. Picking the target vocabulary out of that natural flow is much harder than recognising it in a word list, which is the point.
What's in the free workbook
The workbook for this episode is a free download, not part of the paid pack. It gives you the ten words and phrases exactly as they appear in the audio, each with the example sentences used for repetition, so you can check your spelling and see the two patterns for scared, frightened and terrified side by side. It also contains the full transcript of the Halloween conversation between Katie and Tom, which is where the real value sits: you can listen first, note which of the ten words you caught, then read the transcript to see how many slipped past you and where the hesitations fell.
Use it in that order. Guessing the words with the page closed is more useful than following along. If you find this way of working useful, the all-in-one pack applies the same method — vocabulary, unscripted conversation, transcript, exercises — to every episode we've recorded, for €39.
Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39
Common questions
Is the audio scripted?
The conversation between Katie and Tom is completely unscripted — that's why it's full of pauses, restarts and laughter. The teaching sections that describe each word and give you the answers are scripted, so the instructions stay clear and you always know what to do next.
Do I need the workbook to use the audio?
No. The audio works on its own, and the answers are spoken aloud. The workbook helps if you want to check spelling or read the transcript afterwards, and it's free.
Is this suitable if I don't celebrate Halloween?
Yes. Most of the language isn't seasonal at all. Scared, frightened, terrified and to give someone a fright come up in everyday conversation all year round; only pumpkin, trick or treat and haunted are tied to October.
How should I use a recording of under eight minutes?
Twice, at least. First time, do the guessing game and repeat each word out loud. Second time, skip to the conversation and count how many of the ten words you hear before you look at the transcript.
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