Zapp! English Colloquial Podcast 3.21 - Movies & Cinema
Taught by Tom Wilkinson — Cambridge CELTA
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, this is Katie on a lovely day at the beach with Thomas." Then she starts describing film expressions and Tom has to guess them. He gets close quickly — "Is it to do with tears?" — but he also stalls, argues with the vocabulary, and admits he avoids one expression entirely because of what he might accidentally say instead. Ten expressions, all the sort of thing people actually say coming out of a cinema, none of it the language of a film studies essay.
What you'll hear in this episode
The format is the usual guessing game: Katie describes, Tom guesses, and the conversation wanders wherever it wants in between. She sets up a film that's so sad it makes you cry; he arrives at a tear-jerker, then says "No, I don't cry in movies" — before immediately correcting himself with "…I do sometimes, actually."
The chick flick section is the most opinionated part. Tom works it out by splitting the phrase — the slang word for women, then the slang word for films — and then explains why he dislikes the label: "here's a movie packaged especially for women" and you're supposed to feel "these female feelings". Katie adds chick lit as the book version. Tom also explains, with a laugh, why he doesn't use the phrase out loud at all.
The second half turns negative and gets more useful for it. On the edge of your seat comes back because Tom had already used it accidentally in the first task — his reaction, "Cliffhanger? No that's the end," is a nice moment of a native speaker knowing a phrase without being able to retrieve it. Then bored to tears, bored out of my mind and like watching paint dry, where one of the speakers confesses to putting on "a very intense, foreign language art film" late at night and simply falling asleep. Katie finishes with box-office failure — a flop, to bomb — and it sucks, which Tom notes is spreading: "People use that in Britain as well sometimes."
Quick facts
| Episode | 3.21 — Movies & Cinema |
| Pack | Colloquial 3 |
| Level | 3 |
| Duration | 16 minutes 12 seconds |
| Expressions taught | 10 colloquial film expressions |
| Speakers | Katie and Tom |
| Workbook | Included in the all-in-one pack (€39) |
What you'll learn
The real skill here is reacting to a film in one phrase instead of a sentence of explanation. "It was a real tear-jerker" does the work of "it was very sad and I cried", and it sounds like a person rather than a textbook.
You'll also hear how these expressions behave grammatically, which is where learners usually slip. Flop is both noun and verb: Katie draws the distinction out of Tom directly — "the verb is to flop and the noun…?" — and he answers with both. The pair then hesitate over bomb, agreeing that American English uses the verb ("it bombed") but that "it was a bomb" sounds wrong. That hesitation is worth more than a clean rule, because it shows you two native speakers testing a collocation in real time.
There's register information built in as well. Katie flags the sex-film vocabulary in advance — "Now we're going to finish with a, with a rude one" — and Tom replies "…OK. I like rude ones." The workbook glossary grades every expression 1 to 3, with the warning: "Don't use this with your mother-in-law!!!"
For listening, the Meaning and Pronunciation sections are scripted and slow: a question, the answer, then a beep for you to repeat, plus a natural example sentence such as "It'll have you on the edge of your seat."
The expressions covered
- a tear jerker (1) – a movie that is so sad it makes you cry
- a blue movie / a porno (2) – a pornographic movie, a movie about sex
- a chick flick (1) – a movie more likely to appeal to women than men, usually about romance
- a feel good movie (1) – a movie that makes you happy
- a cliff-hanger (1) – a movie, book or TV programme that leaves you wanting to know what happens next
- on the edge of your seat (1) – very interested in, you are excited because you are not sure about what will happen
- bored to tears / bored out of my mind (1) – very bored
- like watching paint dry (1) – very boring
- it sucks (2) – it's really bad
- a flop / to flop / to bomb (1) – it didn't sell many tickets, was very unsuccessful / to be unsuccessful
What's in the workbook
The audio is free. The workbook that goes with it is part of the Zapp! English all-in-one pack, and for this unit it contains the full transcript of both guessing tasks, the scripted Meaning and Pronunciation drills, and a graded glossary where each expression is marked 1, 2 or 3 for how safely you can use it.
Then two exercises. Practice Exercise 1 is a matching task: five sentence openings — including "They spent loads of money making that movie" and "Oh my God that was so boring, it was" — to be joined with five endings such as "but it still bombed" and "like watching paint dry". Practice Exercise 2 asks you to use the vocabulary to answer real questions: did Avatar bomb, is The Godfather a chick flick, would you tell your girlfriend's mother you'd watched a blue movie. Answers are provided, and the third one is answered honestly: "Probably not!"
Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39
Common questions
Is the conversation scripted?
No. Katie and Tom's guessing game is unscripted, which is why Tom loses his train of thought and why they argue about American usage. 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 Colloquial 3 pack. You'll need reasonably solid English, since the expressions come wrapped in fast natural conversation rather than presented in isolation.
Are these expressions safe to use?
Mostly. Eight of the ten are graded 1 in the glossary — fine in most spoken situations. A blue movie / a porno and it sucks are graded 2: informal, for people you know well.
Is 'chick flick' offensive?
Tom explains in the recording why he avoids it, objecting to films "packaged especially for women". Katie says she doesn't much like the films it describes either. The glossary grades it 1, but you now know it carries an attitude.
How long is the audio?
16 minutes 12 seconds, covering two guessing tasks and two pronunciation drills.
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