Zapp! English Colloquial 3.32 - Numbers & Amounts
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).
"I'm sitting in the park with Donnie," Katie says, and then starts describing idioms without ever saying them. Some Donnie gets instantly — the face of a man who hasn't shaved by the end of the day, the mind that only runs on one track. One stops him completely: "Wow, I don't know this one…erm…I think I need a clue." The clue is a measurement. His guess arrives via Shakespeare. That's the shape of this episode: ten colloquial number expressions, worked out live rather than read from a list.
What you'll hear in this episode
Katie sets Donnie a guessing game in two halves, five expressions each, and describes situations rather than giving definitions. A business that will collapse unless the bank is paid on Monday, rescued by a phone call on Sunday night — at the eleventh hour. Information you weren't told directly but worked out anyway — to put two and two together.
The unscripted detail is where it gets useful. Asked whether he can dance, Donnie answers "very badly", which hands Katie the expression she wanted; Katie admits she's fine until she has to follow steps. On the drinking idiom he adds a nice piece of native-speaker honesty: "When we say I've had one too many perhaps you might have had four or five too many." He files it, drily, as "Perhaps another euphemism from our…Canon of English euphemisms."
One of the speakers observes that in Spain men tend to shave less than in Britain, so a five o'clock shadow or stubble is more acceptable there. When the hardest one comes up, the guess is "does this come from Shakespeare, perhaps? From The Merchant of Venice?" — and a pound of flesh duly appears. The episode closes on Katie's birthday: Donnie asks "Did you make a big thing out of it?" and she admits "…and I did make a big thing out of it."
Quick facts
| Episode | Zapp! English Colloquial 3.32 – Numbers & Amounts |
| Pack | Colloquial 3 |
| Level | 3 |
| Duration | 15 minutes 32 seconds |
| Recorded | in the park |
| Expressions taught | 10, all rated (1) informal-but-widely-usable |
| Workbook | included in the all-in-one pack (€39) |
What you'll learn
The main listening skill here is following a definition-by-example. Katie almost never states a meaning; she builds a scenario — a date, an affair, a couple going to the cinema — and lets the idiom fall out of it. Training your ear on that is exactly what happens in real conversation, where nobody stops to gloss the phrase they've just used.
You'll also hear how these expressions behave in speech rather than in a dictionary. It takes two to tango turns up as a defence: "it's not my fault, it's not my fault…" Three's a crowd is shown to work on its own or as the second half of two's company, three's a crowd. And Katie makes a distinction the glossary can't: make a mountain out of a molehill is always negative, but make a big thing of something can be neutral — "it's my birthday next week, but I'm not going to make a big thing of it."
Two scripted drill sections then test recall the hard way. A number is said aloud — eleven, two, five, one, then left, tango, many, big, three — and you supply the whole expression before repeating it after the beep. Short comprehension checks keep you honest: does something at the eleventh hour happen close to a deadline? One too many whats?
The ten expressions
- to get their pound of flesh – to make you work very hard for your money. Katie's example: a job she likes, where she has to do more than the minimum.
- at the eleventh hour – at the last possible moment, just in time. The Sunday-night phone call that saves the business.
- a five o'clock shadow – a little bit of hair growing on a man's face later in the day because he hasn't shaved.
- to put two and two together – to guess what is happening by using the information around you.
- to have a one track mind – to only be able to think about one thing (and Donnie suggests what that one thing usually is).
- to have one too many – to get a bit drunk.
- to have two left feet – to be a bad dancer.
- it takes two to tango – if two people created a problem / were in a bad situation then both of them are responsible for it, not only one of them.
- to make a big thing of something / to make a mountain out of a molehill – to make something small seem like it is more important than it is.
- Three's a crowd – used when a couple doesn't want a third person to go with them because they want to be alone together.
Inside the workbook
The workbook for this unit gives you the full transcript of both guessing games, so you can see every hesitation you heard, plus the scripted drill lines with their comprehension questions and answers.
After that comes the glossary, with all ten expressions rated 1, 2 or 3 for how informal they are — a system that warns you off using level 3 language with your mother-in-law. Every expression in this unit is a 1, which means you can use it with most people in most situations.
Practice Exercise 1 is a gap-fill built from two short first-person texts: a disastrous date where the woman brings a friend and wants to go dancing, and a Wednesday night out that leaves the narrator unshaven and criticised by his boss. Five expressions to slot in. Practice Exercise 2 gives you five jumbled sentences to rearrange, including The business was saved at the eleventh hour and He's got a one track mind. Answers for both are included.
This workbook is part of the Zapp! English all-in-one pack at €39, which covers every episode.
Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39
Common questions
Is the conversation scripted?
No. Katie and Donnie's exchanges are unscripted, which is why he needs a clue for one expression and reaches for Shakespeare to find it. The teaching sections that set up the drills and give the answers are scripted, so the instructions stay clear.
Do I need to have heard earlier Colloquial 3 episodes?
No. This is unit 32 of Colloquial 3, but each unit is self-contained around one topic — here, numbers and amounts.
Is this audio free?
Yes. The English conversations are free to download. The workbook with the transcript, glossary and exercises comes with the paid pack.
Which expression is hardest for learners?
Probably a pound of flesh — it's the only one without a number, and it defeated a native speaker for a moment. The drill section deals with it separately for exactly that reason.
Can I use all ten with anyone?
All ten are rated 1 in the glossary: informal, but usable with most people in most situations. Keep them out of formal writing.
Get this episode
To save the audio, right-click the MP3 link and choose Save link as.
Listen on
