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Zapp! English Vocabulary & Pronunciation 3.20 - Crime & Punishment
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).
Ask two people what the difference is between murder and manslaughter and you get exactly what we recorded here: a long, cheerful disagreement that ends with Katie admitting, "So the answer to that one is we don't know." That's the honest version of a topic learners meet constantly in the news. Around that conversation we built fifteen words and phrases for crime and punishment — from a burglar and to break in through to to acquit and to sentence — with the pronunciation work that usually gets skipped.
What you'll hear in this episode
The unit runs in two halves. Each one starts with questions read out for you to answer, then a meaning and pronunciation section where you repeat after the beep, then the same questions again with Tom and Katie answering them properly.
In the first half they talk about burglaries and bars on windows, and Katie gets a joke in about the risk of living high up: "Spiderman's broken into Thomas's house and stolen his laptop." One of the hosts then tells the story behind being arrested at eighteen — a borrowed car, a bottle of champagne for a girlfriend, and a father who had to tell the police his son had stolen it, because the alternative was admitting he'd let him drive without insurance. Fingerprints, a cell, a lawyer offered, and, as it's put, "all over a silly family…argument."
The second half moves to famous investigations, muggings, shoplifting and sentencing. Asked what people steal from shops, Tom answers "Steaks." Katie explains why expensive cheese now comes with a security tag: "Because people have been sticking big lumps of cheese up their jumper." They also explain jury duty in England — twelve ordinary people, taken out of work, deciding the verdict while the judge decides the punishment. Tom finds it odd that "members of the public with no formal training" are asked to judge guilt at all.
Quick facts
| Episode | 3.20 — Crime & Punishment |
| Pack | Vocabulary and Pronunciation 3 |
| Level | 3 |
| Duration | 21 minutes 27 seconds |
| Audio | Free |
| Workbook | Included in the €39 all-in-one pack |
What you'll learn
The teaching sections do two jobs at once: they check whether you already know a word, then fix how you say it. Suspect is the clearest example — noun and verb are the same word with different stress, and you'll hear the pair back to back: a suspect / to suspect. There's also linking practice, which is where a lot of listening problems start. In break in, the /k/ from break joins the /ɪ/ from in; in to plead innocent, the /d/ runs into the vowel of innocent. Once you know that, the phrases stop sounding like a single unfamiliar word.
The conversation gives you something the drills can't: the same vocabulary used at speed, with hedging. Listen for how often Tom and Katie soften a claim — I think it means, I was under the impression that, it depends where you are — while arguing about premeditated and mitigating circumstances. You'll also hear the useful distinction between being mugged and being pick pocketed, and how English speakers talk about newspapers "screaming about how…sentences are too light". By the end you should be able to describe a case from arrest to verdict in the right order, and say the words without hesitating over the stress.
Vocabulary from this unit
- a burglar /bɜːɡlə/ — a criminal that goes into buildings and steals things
- to break into /breɪkɪntuː/ — to use force to open a building illegally
- a witness /wɪtnəs/ — a person who sees a crime happen; stress on the first syllable
- a suspect / to suspect /səspekt/ — the person we think may have done something bad or wrong / to think someone may have done something bad or wrong
- a trial /traɪəl/ — the process of deciding if someone has committed a crime, which takes place at a court
- the jury /dʒʊəri/ — a group of people who decide if a person committed a crime or not
- to acquit /əkwɪt/ — to officially say that someone did not commit a crime and release them
- a sentence / to sentence /sentəns/ — a punishment given in court by a judge, often an amount of time to be spent in prison
- manslaughter /mænslɔːtə/ — the crime of killing someone but not with intention
- to mug /mʌɡ/ — to violently steal something from someone in the street
- shoplifting /ʃɒplɪftɪŋ/ — the crime of stealing from a shop
The workbook
The workbook for unit 20 has the full transcript of the English conversations, so you can go back to the manslaughter argument and read exactly how Tom and Katie hedge. There's a glossary with all fifteen items, each with its phonemic transcription and a plain definition.
Then three practice sections. Practice 1 gives you seven stages of a criminal case in the wrong order — police arrest a suspect, the trial starts, a witness gives evidence, the criminal is acquitted / sentenced — and you number them one to seven. Practice 2 is six sentences with one wrong word each: the jury sat quietly in the police station, the court lasted for three days, a shoplifter broke into my house in the middle of the afternoon. Spotting these is the real test of whether you've separated court from trial and shoplifter from burglar. Practice 3 is pronunciation: five pairs of words to compare for stress pattern, including burglar and acquit, which don't match. Answers to everything are at the back.
The workbook comes with the all-in-one pack, which covers every episode in every series.
Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39
Common questions
Is the audio scripted?
The conversations between Tom and Katie are unscripted — they hear the questions and answer them, disagreements and all. 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, from the Vocabulary and Pronunciation 3 pack. The vocabulary is fairly specialised, but the tasks tell you what to do at every step.
How long does it take?
The audio is 21 minutes 27 seconds. The three workbook practice sections add perhaps another fifteen minutes.
Do I need the workbook to follow the audio?
No — the audio works on its own and is free. The workbook is where the ordering task, the error correction and the stress-pattern exercises live, plus the transcript.
What's in the pack?
Every workbook for every episode, including this one, for €39.
Get this episode
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