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Zapp! English Vocabulary & Pronunciation 2.3 - Describing People (& Character)
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).
The first conversation opens with someone noting that it is mid-winter and yet "it's almost like summer". Then Katie starts the guessing game. She asks whether Tom is dishonest, he answers "No. I'm very, very honest." and she turns straight to the microphone: "Do we believe him?" That is the shape of this episode — Katie describes an adjective, someone guesses it, and the conversation wanders into queue-jumping, flowers and whether it is safer to be pessimistic.
What you'll hear in this episode
There are two unscripted conversations. In the first, Katie describes nine adjectives for Tom to guess: honest, dishonest, rude, polite, mean, generous, easy-going, romantic and intelligent. Tom gets polite quickly, then produces impolite before Katie steers him towards rude — and he argues that "Rude is a bit stronger" than impolite. Asked for an example, he says that "being British, it's very rude when people don't queue", singling out people who jump the queue for buses. When Katie asks what you can be generous with, Tom offers possessions, money and time, and Katie closes it down with "We don't want to be too generous with our answers". Before easy-going, he tries two informal alternatives: "Chilled out or laid back". The romantic clue involves flowers, and one of the speakers admits he used to buy them often, mainly because there was a flower shop near his house — prompting Katie's aside, "He's being all shy now".
In the second conversation Katie plays the same game with Alec: hard-working, sociable, patient, impatient, optimistic, pessimistic, shy, generous and independent. She over-explains the first clue and laughs, "Oh I think I've just told you it!" Alec says he works hard "and also play hard", argues that patience is the most important trait a teacher can have, and explains his own pessimism: "you reduce the... chance of being disappointed".
Quick facts
| Episode | 2.3 — Describing People (& Character) |
| Pack | Vocabulary and Pronunciation 2 |
| Level | 2 |
| Duration | 23 minutes 11 seconds |
| Voices | Katie, Tom, Alec |
| Workbook | Included in the all-in-one pack |
What you'll learn
The listening skill here is guessing vocabulary from a spoken definition — exactly what you do when a native speaker describes a word you have forgotten. You hear the definition first, in ordinary conversational English, and only then the word itself.
The episode also shows how English builds opposites. Katie makes the point directly: put dis- in front of honest, or im- in front of polite and patient. But she also shows where the pattern stops being enough — impolite is grammatical, and yet rude is the word people actually reach for, and mean is the everyday opposite of generous rather than anything built with a prefix. You will also hear mean used in its two senses: not generous with money, and simply not nice.
The pronunciation sections drill the parts learners get wrong. The h in honest is silent. Polite has a weak first syllable, /pə/. Intelligent has four syllables with the stress on the second. Sociable has a /ʃ/ sound in the middle, and so does impatient, where the letter t is pronounced /ʃ/. Optimistic and pessimistic both have four syllables with the stress on the third — a pattern worth learning as a pair.
Vocabulary from the workbook
The workbook glossary gives each word with its phonetic transcription and a plain definition. A few of them:
- mean — won't spend any money. Katie prompts Tom with "a word beginning with m".
- generous — enjoys giving money or things to people and does this more than most people. Both Tom and Alec extend it to time and friendship.
- easygoing — not easily upset, relaxed and calm about things.
- romantic — does things that show a lot of love e.g. buys flowers.
- hard-working — puts a lot of effort into work, the opposite to lazy.
- sociable — likes to spend time with other people, enjoys being with people and going out.
- impatient — cannot wait easily or for a long time without getting upset or angry.
- pessimistic — always thinks something bad will happen in a situation, look for the bad things.
- independent — like to do things without the help of other people.
In the workbook
The Unit 3 workbook contains the full transcript of both English conversations, so you can read exactly what Tom and Alec said, hesitations included, and the scripted meaning-and-pronunciation sections in print.
After the glossary come three practice sections with answers. Practice 1 puts five adjectives in the wrong sentences and asks you to swap them back — "You can't trust her. She's impatient" needs fixing to dishonest. Practice 2 is five comprehension questions that test whether you really have the meaning: would an independent person want to live with their parents at 25? Does an easy-going person get upset easily? Practice 3 is pronunciation: five pairs of words, and you decide whether the stress pattern is the same or different. The answer key marks each one out with stress dots, so you can see that generous and sociable match, while patient and polite do not.
This workbook comes with the Zapp! English all-in-one pack — every episode, every workbook, €39 once.
Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39
Common questions
Is the audio scripted?
The conversations with Tom and Alec are unscripted — they are genuinely guessing. The teaching sections that set up the game, check meanings and give answers are scripted, so the instructions stay clear.
What level is this episode?
Level 2, from the Vocabulary and Pronunciation 2 pack.
Which adjectives are covered?
Eighteen in total, from honest and rude through to optimistic, pessimistic, shy and independent — positive and negative, with the opposites taught in pairs.
Do I need the workbook to follow the audio?
No. The audio works on its own at 23 minutes. The workbook adds the transcript, the glossary with phonetics, and the three practice sections with answers.
How do I practise word stress with this episode?
Repeat after the beep in the pronunciation sections, then do Practice 3, comparing pairs such as optimistic and impatient, which look similar but are stressed differently.
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