Zapp! English Vocabulary & Pronunciation 2.17 - Professions & Kinds of People

Halfway through describing a director, Amanda runs out of road: "Or it's also a person who dire...mmm...hold on..." Then the answer arrives anyway. That is the shape of this episode — someone talking her way towards a word in real time, with the pauses and the coughs left in, while you try to get there first. Fifteen nouns for kinds of people, some of them jobs, some of them not, all described before they are named.

What you'll hear in this episode

The unit is built around two listening rounds. In each one, Amanda describes a person and you guess the word before it's given. She's unscripted, so the definitions arrive the way real explanations do: she starts with hobbies versus paid work to get at professional, uses a football team and then a boat for captain, and works from robbery and prison towards criminal.

The first round covers professional, captain, criminal, performer, director, employee, judge and prisoner. The second moves further from the workplace: leader, candidate, owner, patient, amateur, citizen and politician.

The politician clip is the one you'll remember. "I shouldn't say this, but I don't really like these people very much," Amanda begins, before adding that they "speak a lot...often about, not very much in particular" and that "lots of them get paid for doing nothing" — followed by laughter. For amateur she reaches for a choir singer who performs at weekends "but they're not paid for it".

Between the two listening rounds come the scripted Meaning and Pronunciation sections, where each word is checked with a question, then drilled with a beep and a natural example sentence: "Are you the owner of this vehicle?", "He's an amateur cook.", "Some politicians only care about power."

Quick facts

What you'll learn

The obvious gain is fifteen nouns. The less obvious one is how to survive a definition you didn't expect. Amanda never gives dictionary wording — she circles a word with examples, restarts sentences, and sometimes uses one of the target words to explain another (she describes a leader as "the person who is the, director"). Following that is exactly the skill you need when a colleague or a doctor explains something to you without warning.

On pronunciation, the episode is precise about things learners often get wrong. You'll hear that in patient, "the first t is actually a /ʃ/ sound". Employee has its main stress on the last syllable. Performer is stressed on the second syllable, with a weak last syllable. Candidate takes stress on the first syllable. And you'll practise the weak end sounds that English piles onto these words: the /ə/ at the end of director, leader and owner, the /əl/ at the end of criminal.

There's useful meaning work too. Criminal and prisoner overlap but aren't interchangeable; leader and director describe different kinds of top position; employee and employer differ by one syllable and reverse who pays whom. The workbook drills all three pairs.

Vocabulary from this unit

• a professional /prəfeʃnəl/ — someone who has special skills or qualifications, or is paid to do a job rather than doing it as a hobby
• a captain /kæptɪn/ — the leader of a sports team or the leader on a ship or plane
• a performer /pəfɔ:mə/ — someone who sings, dances, acts or entertains other people
• a judge /dʒʌdʒ/ — the person who works in a court and decides how long a criminal will go to prison
• a prisoner /prɪz(ə)nə/ — a person who is in a prison or other place, but cannot leave because someone is keeping them there
• a candidate /kændɪdeɪt/ — one of the people trying to get a job or taking an exam
• an amateur /æmətʃə/ — somebody who does an activity for enjoyment, not as their job, or somebody who is not very skilled at something
• a citizen /sɪtɪzən/ — a person who is legally living in a place and has rights and responsibilities in society

The full glossary in the workbook covers all fifteen words, including criminal, director, employee, leader, owner, patient and politician.

In the workbook

The workbook for 2.17 gives you the complete transcript of both listening rounds, so you can go back and see how Amanda built each definition, hesitations included. After that comes the glossary — all fifteen nouns with phonemic transcription and a plain definition.

Then three practice sections. Practice 1 gives you five things somebody might say — "Give me all your money!", "You will go to prison for three years.", "Doctor, I don't feel very well." — and you write who said them. Practice 2 is five sentences where you choose between two close words: employer or employee, leader or director, amateur or professional, citizen or leader, criminal or prisoner. Practice 3 is pronunciation: first you underline the shared sounds in professional / patient / politician and in captain / criminal / citizen, then you match words with the same stress pattern, marked out with dots so you can see the shape. Full answers are included, with the stress patterns drawn.

The workbook comes with the all-in-one pack, which covers every episode in the series for €39.

Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39

Is the audio free?

Yes. The English conversations and teaching sections are free to download. The workbook with the transcript, glossary and practice exercises is part of the paid pack.

Is this episode scripted?

Amanda's descriptions are unscripted, which is why she pauses, restarts and occasionally loses her thread. The teaching sections that set up the guessing task and give the answers are scripted, so the instructions stay clear.

What level do I need?

This is a Level 2 unit. If you can follow a slow explanation and want to move from single job titles towards words like candidate, citizen and amateur, it will fit.

Do I have to guess before the answer?

It works better if you do. Pause after each description, say your guess out loud, then listen. Guessing wrong and hearing why is what makes the word stick.

How long is it?

17 minutes 45 seconds — one listen on a commute, and worth a second pass with the transcript.

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