Zapp! English Vocabulary 2.11: Things in the House

Katie asks a simple question — how many pillows do you have on your bed? — and the answers turn into small portraits of two very different homes. One speaker has room for approximately, four hangers...for my clothes. Another has three sinks, one of which is mostly used as "a place to store more stuff". Along the way you get the vowel warning that every learner needs: sheet takes a long /iː/, and the recording is blunt about what happens if you shorten it.

What you'll hear in this episode

The unit is built in two halves. First the bedroom: pillow, wardrobe, duvet, chest of drawers, mattress, sheet. Katie asks the questions, you hear them again with a native answer, and in between there's pronunciation work on the tricky ones — the /eɪ/ at the end of duvet despite the spelling, the connected sounds in a chest of drawers (/tʃestəv/), and the fact that drawers is just /drɔːz/, not two syllables.

Alec answers the first set. His pillow has to be soft because of his neck, he shares a chest of drawers two-drawers-each with his girlfriend and keeps his passport and credit cards in there, and on the mattress question he gives up honestly: "I've tried a...hard mattress...and a soft mattress, and...I get...a bad back, on both!"

The second half moves through the rest of the house: tap, cushion, worktop, kettle, iron, blinds, curtains, carpet, rug, sink. Kami answers these, and the British–American gap becomes the real lesson. She says she's "more used to calling it a faucet", and admits "I've actually never called it a worktop before" — for her it's a counter. She has no kettle at all and heats water in the microwave, and she opens the iron question with "Ironically we just bought an iron last weekend". Her kitchen has exactly one electrical outlet, which she calls "quite a nightmare".

Quick facts

Episode	2.11 — Things in the House
Pack	Vocabulary and Pronunciation 2
Level	2
Duration	20 minutes 44 seconds
Voices you'll hear	Katie, Alec, Kami
Workbook	Included in the all-in-one pack (€39)

What you'll learn

The obvious gain is vocabulary you use every day at home — and the harder-to-find UK/US pairs that go with it: wardrobe/closet, tap/faucet, worktop/counter. Hearing Kami hesitate over worktop teaches that better than a list does, because you learn which word is normal for whom.

The pronunciation focus is word stress and unexpected spellings. You'll practise stress on the first syllable in mattress, kettle, carpet and curtains, and the workbook then asks you to compare pairs and decide whether the pattern is the same or different. The answer — they're all the same, all stressed on the first syllable, as most two-syllable nouns are — is a rule you can carry to hundreds of other words.

There are two spellings that catch nearly everybody. Iron is not /aɪrɒn/ but /aɪjən/, and in a verb phrase we say do the ironing. Duvet ends in -et on paper and /eɪ/ in the mouth. And the /iː/ in sheet gets its own careful warning.

For listening, the two answer sections are unedited and full of hesitation, restarts and self-correction. That's the point: you're training your ear on how people actually talk about their flats, not on a clean model sentence.

Vocabulary from the workbook

a duvet /duːveɪ/ (noun) – a warm covering for your bed, often filled with feathers. One speaker swapped thin sheets for a thick duvet about a week before recording.
a chest of drawers /tʃestəvdrɔːz/ (noun) – a piece of furniture with parts we can pull out and push back in, and often keeps socks, underwear etc inside.
a tap (UK) / faucet (US) /tæp/ /fɔːsɪt/ (noun) – something we turn to let water flow or stop it.
a worktop /wɜːktɒp/ (noun) – a flat surface that we use to do things like prepare food on.
a kettle /ketl/ (noun) – an electric item that we use to boil water.
an iron /aɪən/ (noun) – an electric thing which gets hot and is used to make clothes flat.
blinds /blaɪndz/ (noun) – a window covering which you pull down to close.
a rug /rʌɡ/ (noun) – a small carpet that can be moved around.

In the workbook

The workbook for this unit is part of the all-in-one pack. It gives you every question Katie asks, both lists of target words, and the full transcripts of Alec's and Kami's answers, so you can read the hesitations you heard and check anything that went past too fast.

After that there's a vocabulary glossary with phonemic transcription and a plain definition for all sixteen words, then three practice sections. Practice 1 asks short comprehension questions — which is warmer, a sheet or a duvet? What do you switch on if you want a cup of tea? Practice 2 is five gap-fills using words from the unit, including worktop and wardrobe in natural sentences. Practice 3 is the pronunciation task: five pairs of words, same stress pattern or different? Full answers are included at the back, with the explanation about two-syllable nouns.

Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39

Common questions

Is the audio scripted?

The conversations with Alec and Kami are unscripted — they hear each question for the first time and answer as they think. The teaching sections that set up the tasks and give the answers are scripted, so the instructions stay clear.

Will I learn British or American words?

Both, where they differ. The unit teaches wardrobe/closet and tap/faucet directly, and Kami's answers show counter used in place of worktop.

Do I need the workbook to follow the audio?

No — the English conversations work on their own. The workbook adds the transcripts, the glossary and the three practice sections with answers.

What level is this?

Level 2 in the Zapp! English Vocabulary and Pronunciation series. If you can follow a question like "Do you have lots of cushions around your house?" you're ready.

How should I use the pronunciation parts?

Repeat after the beep, out loud. The stress work only sticks if you say the words rather than read them.

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