Zapp! English Vocabulary & Pronunciation 2.2 - Living with People

One of our speakers moved house recently and did the whole thing on foot: "we did it all, on foot...with suitcases". Another explains that she does the washing up and the ironing herself, "because I live alone, and if I don't do it, it won't be done, it's as simple as that". This episode is about where you live and who you live with — the buildings, the jobs nobody wants to do, and the neighbours you can hear through the ceiling.

What you'll hear in this episode

Katie asks the questions and two speakers, Kim and Clare, answer them. Before each conversation we build the language step by step, so you hear each word broken into syllables and then said in a full sentence: detached, semi-detached, a flat, an apartment, on the ground floor, neighbours, landlord, tenant, privacy, walls, ceiling, floor.

In the first conversation, Katie asks about moving in, privacy and floors. One of our speakers admits that sharing a house with lots of people "wouldn't really be my...kind of thing", and describes a landlady who speaks to her in very fast Spanish — good practice, but hard work. There's a lovely moment of confusion about floor numbers, where the floor called the first floor turns out to come after principal and possibly entresuelo, and a previous flat on the fifth floor with no lift: "And that keeps you fit, I can tell you." The noisy neighbours in that building were holiday guests "having a bit of a fiesta".

The second half covers household jobs and flatmate problems: do the washing up, do the ironing, do the cleaning, share, communal, use up, noisy, dirty, lend and borrow. Asked whether she could share with someone who had a very dirty room, our second speaker doesn't hesitate: "Absolutely not." She's been there, calls it "unbearable, it's really, really difficult", and finishes with "So no. Never again."

Quick facts

What you'll learn

The teaching is built around guessing before hearing. We ask a question — what do we call a house that isn't joined to another house? — you try, and then you hear the answer, the syllables, and an example sentence to repeat.

Pronunciation gets real attention. You'll hear neighbours split so you can focus on the second syllable, /bəz/, and move in run together as /muːvɪn/ so you can hear the linking. Communal is drilled as /kə/ /mj/. Then the workbook asks you to find the schwa /ə/ in privacy, dirty, communal, tenant and apartment — and the answers show that dirty has none, while communal and apartment each have two.

There's a useful warning about floors: in America there's no ground floor, so the British ground floor is the American first floor. We also give you a simple rule for the pair learners get wrong most often: lend is to, borrow is from.

Because the answers are unscripted, you'll also hear how real speakers hesitate, correct themselves and soften opinions — "or any other option rather", "I suppose you could count them neighbours". That's the listening skill: following meaning through hesitation.

Vocabulary from this episode

• detached (adjective) – a house that is not joined to another house; semi detached – joined on one side to another house. Both are drilled in the first teaching section.
• a flat (noun, UK) / an apartment (noun, USA) – a place to live that is part of a bigger building.
• a landlord (noun) – a man who owns the house you live in, you pay him money to live there (we can also have a landlady); a tenant – the person who pays a landlord to live in a place.
• privacy (noun) – the ability to do things without other people looking or knowing about them.
• communal (adjective) – things or places that are for everyone in a group, discussed when Katie asks who should clean them.
• to use up (phrasal verb) – use something so that there is no more of it, as in the workbook's "Who used up all the coffee?"
• to lend – give something to someone to use and then take back; borrow – take something from someone to use and then give back.
• a ceiling (noun) – the flat surface above your head on the inside of a building.

In the workbook

The workbook for this unit comes with the paid all-in-one pack. It contains the full transcript of both conversations, so you can read exactly what Kim and Clare said, hesitations and all, plus every teaching question and example sentence.

In the Extra Materials you get a glossary of 26 terms with phonemic transcription and simple definitions, then three practice tasks:

• Practice 1 — correct the mistakes in five sentences. One asks you to fix "Can I lend some money from you?", another hides a detached / semi-detached problem and a tenant / landlord mix-up.
• Practice 2 — match sentence halves, so Who used up all joins the coffee? and The walls joins need painting.
• Practice 3 — the pronunciation task on the /ə/ sound in five words from the unit.

Full answers are printed at the back. The workbook for every episode is part of the €39 all-in-one pack.

Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39

Common questions

Is the audio scripted?

The conversations with Kim and Clare are unscripted — they're answering Katie's questions for the first time. 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 2, from the Vocabulary and Pronunciation 2 pack.

What's the difference between lend and borrow?

We give you the short version in the recording: lend is to and borrow is from. So you lend money to someone, and borrow it from them.

Is the first floor the same in Britain and America?

No. In Britain you have the ground floor, then the first floor. In America there's no ground floor, so the British ground floor is the American first floor.

Do I need the workbook to follow the audio?

The audio works on its own, but the workbook gives you the transcript, the glossary and the three practice tasks with answers.

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