Zapp! English Colloquial 3.10 – Rules & Obligations (Audio Podcast)
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).
Katie opens this one with "Hi, I’m sitting in the park." A few minutes later the background gets the better of her: "I’d like to lay the law down with those parrots; they can just stop squawking!" In between, she and Donnie work through ten colloquial expressions about rules, control and who gets to make the decisions — the guessing game format, with Donnie getting most of them almost instantly and admitting he occasionally bends the rules himself.
What you'll hear in this episode
The format is simple: Katie describes an expression and Donnie tries to name it, so you can play along before he answers. The first five are all about asserting authority. Katie sets up put your foot down with a situation rather than a definition, and Donnie fills it out himself — a teacher who lets a noisy class run for a while, then decides to "assert my authority". Then comes an expression with an item of clothing in it (wear the trousers), call the shots, and lay down the law, which Donnie gets so fast Katie tells him "You’re very quick!" The fifth, rule the roost, gets a small etymology detour: a roost is where chickens live, and the person who rules it is, as Donnie puts it, "the boss chicken, the boss of the chickens".
The second half moves to the household and to the word rules itself. Both speakers stop to flag that under the thumb is loaded — Donnie says "it might be a bit sexist", Katie agrees it is, and they leave it there rather than tidying it up. Then bend the rules is positioned between breaking and following them, play by the rules comes from sport, and let your heart rule your head gets defined by Donnie as "More emotional than logical, maybe." Katie owns up to being a goody-two-shoes; Donnie's reply: "I don’t think I have ever been accused of being a goodie two shoes."
Quick facts
| Episode | Colloquial 3.10 – Rules & Obligations |
| Pack | Colloquial 3 |
| Level | 3 |
| Duration | 13 minutes 33 seconds |
| Recorded | In a park |
| Speakers | Katie and Donnie |
| Expressions taught | 10 |
| Workbook | Glossary, two practice exercises, answer key |
| Audio | Free; workbook in the €39 pack |
What you'll learn
The useful thing about the guessing format is that you hear each expression defined twice, in two registers. Katie's clues are plain and functional ("tells people what to do, makes the decisions"), while Donnie's confirmations are looser and more spontaneous — he groups lay down the law with put your foot down as "to establish and to make it clear what the rules are, who’s in charge". Hearing a learner-friendly definition and a native paraphrase back to back is exactly the kind of double exposure that makes an idiom stick.
You'll also hear how these expressions actually behave in speech. Lay down the law turns up as "lay the law down" — the particle moves, and native speakers do that without thinking. The audio says "goodie two shoes" while the workbook glossary writes it goody-two-shoes, which is a fair reflection of a phrase people say far more often than they write. And listen for what happens around under the thumb: the conversation slows, both speakers hedge, and you learn that knowing an expression includes knowing when it will sound dated.
Two scripted Meaning and Pronunciation drills follow each conversation. The first prompts you with a single word (foot, roost, trousers, shots, law) and you produce the whole phrase; the second asks questions like "What is a little bit less than breaking the rules?" so you retrieve the expression from its meaning rather than from a cue word.
The expressions, as the workbook defines them
Each entry is marked 1 (informal, fine in most situations) or 2 (very informal, for people you know well):
- to rule the roost (2) – to be the person in the home who controls things.
- to lay down the law (2) – to tell people what they can and can’t do without caring about their opinions.
- to put your foot down (2) – to tell people in a strong way what they cannot do.
- to call the shots (2) – to be the person who makes the decisions.
- to wear the trousers (2) – to be in control / make the decisions in a relationship.
- to be under the thumb (2) – to be controlled by another person, especially in the home.
- to bend the rules (1) – to do something not fully against the rules but not exactly follow them.
- to play by the rules (1) – to do things the correct way, to follow the rules.
- to be a goody-two-shoes (2) – to always follow the rules and want people to think you are good.
- let your heart rule your head (1) – follow your emotions when making decisions.
What's in the workbook
The workbook for 3.10 gives you the full transcript of both conversations with Katie and Donnie, so you can go back and see exactly where a clue was misheard or a phrase came out in a different word order. Then there's the graded glossary above, with the 1–3 informality scale explained at the top — including the warning about level 3 expressions: "Don’t use this with your mother-in-law!!!"
After that, two exercises. Practice Exercise 1 is error correction, and the mistakes are the realistic ones: let my heart run my head, laying out the law, play at the rules, under her thumbs, Who wears the trouser. Practice Exercise 2 is a matching task where you join sentence halves — "Stop being such a goody-two-shoes and bend…" with "the rules for once!" — so you practise the whole collocation rather than the keyword. A full answer key follows both.
This workbook is part of the Zapp! English all-in-one pack: every episode's transcript, glossary and exercises for €39, one payment, no subscription.
Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39
Common questions
Is the audio free?
Yes. The English conversations are free to download and listen to. The workbook that goes with this episode is part of the €39 pack.
Are the conversations scripted?
No. Katie and Donnie's guessing game is unscripted, which is why you get the parrots, the hesitations and the false starts. The teaching sections that set up tasks and give answers are scripted, so the instructions stay clear.
What level is this episode?
Level 3, from the Colloquial 3 pack. It assumes you can follow a natural-speed conversation between two native speakers without a transcript in front of you.
Can I use these expressions at work?
Mostly not with strangers or superiors. Eight of the ten are marked 2 in the glossary — very informal, for people you know well. Bend the rules, play by the rules and let your heart rule your head are the safer three.
Do I need the workbook to follow along?
No, but the drills work better if you've seen the phrases written down first — especially rule the roost and goody-two-shoes, which are hard to spell from the audio alone.
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