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Zapp! English Vocabulary & Pronunciation Podcast 3.4 - Travel
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).
Which is worse, take-off or landing? One of our speakers says "I hate take off…I hate being in the air and I hate landing", which doesn't narrow it down much. Tom has an answer ready: "Take-off is. Because you've got the whole journey in front of you, the whole flight." And then, more cheerfully, "Landing at least you know that it's nearly over." That's the tone of this unit — fifteen travel words, checked and repeated, then dropped into a real conversation about flying, camping, needles and overweight bags.
What you'll hear in this episode
We recorded Katie and Tom answering two sets of travel questions, with the vocabulary and pronunciation work in between. The first set covers the airport: jet lag, take-off and landing, the runway, the boarding card and the departure gate. Tom explains that he deals with jet lag by shifting his sleep patterns before he flies. Katie asks whether he watches the runway on the way down; the answer is honest — he looks out of the window, then looks away before the wheels touch, "because I'm frightened at the last minute". One of the speakers admits to being banned from carrying their own boarding card; the other counts their documents "about ten times".
The second set is wider: backpacking versus a luxury hotel, favourite destinations, whether the journey or the destination matters more, planning a route by car, weekend trips, camping, setting off early, vaccinations and luggage. There's a good exchange about sat nav — "I have been…taken off route, quite a few times by sat nav" — and a slightly gruesome disagreement about which vaccination goes in your arm and which one used to go somewhere less dignified, "with the big needle". It ends at the check-in desk, with an excess baggage story and the airline's imagined line: "Here, have you got a credit card? You owe us two hundred euros please."
Quick facts
| Episode | 3.4 |
| Pack | Vocabulary and Pronunciation 3 |
| Level | 3 |
| Duration | 19 minutes 16 seconds |
| Speakers | Katie and Tom |
| Workbook | Included in the all-in-one pack (€39) |
What you'll learn
The pronunciation focus is on things that trip learners up in exactly these words. Stress moves between the noun and the verb: take-off and to take off are not said the same way, and we ask you to hear the difference before you repeat. In to set off, we slow down the join so you can hear the final /t/ running into the /ɒ/ of off — /setɒf/ — which is why connected speech makes travel announcements so hard to catch.
You'll also work on the /ɪdʒ/ ending shared by baggage and luggage, the /tʃə/ in departure, the long /uː/ in route, the /ɜː/ in journey, and stress on the third syllable of vaccinations. There's a warning about route too: in Australian English it can be "a very colloquial way to say, have sex", so mind your vowel.
Beyond the words, you get natural answering strategies: hedging with "yes and no", correcting each other mid-sentence, and the way English speakers soften a strong opinion — "I think it's a love hate thing camping though isn't it?"
Vocabulary from this unit
- jet-lag – to be tired because you have crossed international time zones; the opening question is how you deal with it
- a runway – the road a plane goes on to take off and land
- a boarding card – the card you need to show to get on a plane
- the departure gate – the place you wait before you get on the plane
- a route – the way you go from one place to another, which direction / which road / path etc
- a trip – when you go somewhere and come back again, as in the weekend city break question
- to set off – to leave, begin a journey
- luggage / baggage – the bags you take on a journey, and the reason for that excess baggage fee
What's in the workbook
The workbook for this unit gives you the full glossary of all fifteen travel words with phonemic transcription and short definitions, so you can check anything you missed while listening. Then there are three practice sections. Practice 1 is quick comprehension questions — will you have jet lag flying from London to Paris? Do you go backpacking with a suitcase? — with answers that don't take themselves too seriously (the vaccination one ends "or your bottom!"). Practice 2 is a gap-fill using the unit's words in realistic sentences about heavy bags and early starts. Practice 3 is the pronunciation task: you sort seven words into two stress patterns, ●◦ and ◦◦●◦, which is the clearest way to see why luggage and destination behave so differently. Full answers are included.
This workbook comes with the Vocabulary and Pronunciation 3 pack.
Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39
Common questions
Is the conversation scripted?
The conversations between Katie and Tom are unscripted, which is why you get false starts and interruptions. The teaching sections that set up the tasks and give the answers are scripted, so the instructions stay clear.
What level is this episode?
Level 3. The words are everyday travel vocabulary, but the answers are spoken at natural speed with real hesitation.
Do I need the workbook to follow along?
No. The audio works on its own. The workbook adds the glossary, the gap-fill and the stress-pattern task, plus answers.
What's the best way to use the repetition parts?
Repeat out loud after the beep, and copy the stress rather than the individual sounds — especially take-off versus to take off.
How long is it?
19 minutes 16 seconds, including all the pronunciation practice.
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