Zapp! English Colloquial 3.25 - Memory

Katie sets Tom a guessing game and he starts badly: it's hot, and by his own admission "my brain is slowing down". When she asks what you call a bad memory, all he can manage at first is "Like a kitchen utensil?" — which is, admittedly, correct. Eighteen minutes later he's forgotten the word blank while explaining what blank means. That's the shape of this episode: ten colloquial expressions about memory, tested on someone whose memory is visibly struggling.

What you'll hear in this episode

Katie describes each expression in plain English and Tom has to produce it. The format means you hear the definition, the guess, the correction and then real examples, all in unscripted speech.

The first half covers bad memories. Once Tom gets to a memory like a sieve, Katie makes him unpack the image: a sieve is used "to drain, or to remove the water from something that you have cooked or boiled", and it has "Lots of holes where the water falls through." Tom finishes the metaphor himself — "your brain has lots of holes and your memories fall out". Then comes to forget your head if it was loose, and a moment where Tom stalls and says, honestly, "I was just trying to remember the expression."

For on the tip of my tongue he offers a modern gloss: "like it's a hard drive on a computer or something" — he's just accessing the file. Dizzy prompts him to mention dizzy blonde and then immediately apologise: "Sorry if you're blonde!"

The second half moves to mind expressions — it slipped my mind, my mind went blank, out of sight, out of mind — plus to ring a bell and to rack your brains. Asked when you'd use out of sight, out of mind, Tom replies "Erm…my brain's gone blank!" before recovering with an example about shutting the door on a dirty room. Katie's closing threat: "I'll ask you again in ten minutes and see how many you can remember." Tom's answer is one word.

Quick facts

What you'll learn

The useful thing about this recording is that these idioms are not fixed the way textbooks suggest. You'll hear my mind went blank and my mind's gone blank used within seconds of each other, and Tom improvising near-misses on the way to the right answer: my head has frozen, my brain's frozen, forget her own name. Learning to hear the flexible edges of an expression matters as much as memorising the canonical form.

You'll also pick up how native speakers hedge before they answer. Tom repeatedly buys time with a category rather than the phrase — "Something to do with slipping?", "Something to do with a bell?", "Something to do with my tongue?" That's a genuinely useful strategy when a word is nearly there, and it's exactly what on the tip of my tongue describes.

There's register work here too. Katie and Tom discuss why dizzy is a softer criticism than calling someone disorganised — Tom calls it "a nice way of saying I'm a little bit disorganised". And the two guided pronunciation sections drill each expression in a full sentence, so you practise the stress and rhythm rather than isolated words: He forgets everything. He's got a memory like a sieve.

The expressions covered

• to have a memory like a sieve – to have a very bad memory. Katie asks whether Tom has one; he says it depends on what he's remembering.
• to forget your head if it was loose – to be very forgetful.
• to jog your memory – to help you remember something.
• dizzy – forgetful and a bit disorganised. Illustrated with keys left in the door of a house.
• on the tip of your tongue – in your head somewhere and close to being said or remembered.
• to ring a bell – to sound familiar, you think you know this, but can't remember why.
• It slipped my mind. – I forgot.
• My mind went blank. – all the information in my brain disappeared.
• Out of sight out of mind. – if you can't see something, you don't think about it.
• to rack your brains – to try very hard to think about or remember something.

In the workbook

The audio is free. The accompanying workbook for this unit is part of the paid all-in-one pack, and it gives you the whole conversation in writing plus the practice you need to make the expressions stick.

You get the full transcript of both halves, so you can go back and see exactly where Tom hesitates and how Katie steers him. The glossary lists all ten expressions with definitions and an informality rating from 1 to 3 — every expression here is a 1, meaning you can use them in speech with most people in most situations, which is not true of everything in the Colloquial series.

Then there are two exercises. Practice Exercise 1 gives you five sentences with the idioms subtly broken — My mind went completely black, I'll try and rack your memory — and asks you to correct them. This is harder than it looks, because the wrong versions sound plausible. Practice Exercise 2 is a gap-fill about forgetting a neighbour's name that uses four of the expressions in one short paragraph. Answers are included for both.

Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39

Frequently asked questions

Is the audio free?

Yes. The English conversations are free to download. The workbook that goes with this unit comes with the all-in-one pack at €39.

Are these conversations scripted?

The conversations are unscripted — you can hear Tom searching for words and losing his train of thought. 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 of the Zapp! English Colloquial series, from the Colloquial 3 pack.

Can I use these expressions at work?

All ten are rated 1 in the glossary: informal, but usable in speech with most people in most situations. As Katie puts it in the introduction, use them with your friends rather than in more formal situations.

How long does the episode take?

18 minutes 17 seconds, including the two pronunciation drills where you repeat after the beep.

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