Talking About the Senses – Zapp! English Listening 3.12

One of our speakers, Alec, smelt vinegar the day before we recorded, and it threw him straight back to the English seaside — chips on a windy beach — even though, as he points out, he was by the sea anyway. That kind of accident is what this episode is built on. We asked several people which sense matters most to them and which one they'd sacrifice, and then let a four-way conversation run until it arrived at Subway bread, waffles and the smell of a spice shop.

What you'll hear in this episode

We start with short answers. Emma talks herself through the problem out loud — sight first, because she could still move around and read faces, then "I think I would opt to lose…maybe taste", even though she loves food. Jon, on the beach, is blunt: "I’d lose my sense of smell." He mentions a sister who can't smell at all and doesn't seem bothered, which produces the least polite joke in the unit.

Then two pairs. Niall surprises Katie with "It would probably be touch." Mark picks sight as most important because of reading and photography — "if I couldn’t read I would go insane" — and worries about burning himself every time he made a cup of tea if touch went. Tom would sacrifice smell, on condition that taste survives.

The longest section is a conversation in a park between Katie, Tom, Amanda and Alec, interrupted early on by a parrot. Tom describes the sea: "It just relaxes me instantly". Amanda explains how brands commission scents — "they’re actually marketing smells" — pumped through shops, which sends Tom off into a joke about "every time you go to the sea you’ll be thinking I must go shopping". They agree that some shops broadcast themselves: "I can smell one of those at about ten miles".

Quick facts

Episode	3.12
Pack	Listening 3
Level	3
Length	15 minutes 08 seconds
Recording location (stated on air)	The beach, north east of England
Speakers heard	Katie, Tom, Mark, Emma, Jon, Niall, Amanda, Alec
Workbook	Included in the €39 all-in-one pack

What you'll learn

The skill this unit trains is comparing two answers to the same question. Tasks 3 and 4 each give you a pair of speakers, and the question is simply whether they say anything the same. In Task 3 the answer is no — and part of the reason is that Niall never actually says which sense matters most to him, so there's nothing to compare. Noticing what a speaker didn't answer is a real listening skill, and the workbook makes it the point.

You'll also hear how English speakers hedge while they think. Emma's "ooh that’s really tricky", Niall's "not too bothered about that one really", Mark's chain of "but…" clauses that never quite commit — these are the shapes of unrehearsed opinion, and they're far more common in conversation than tidy topic sentences.

The park conversation gives you overlapping speech: four people finishing each other's ideas about fire and waves being "hypnotic" and "rhythmic", with agreement noises stacked on top. Following who is adding what, rather than trying to catch every word, is exactly the practice you need for group conversation. There's also a moment of pure implication to decode, when Tom says he doesn't like the smell of curry "coming from someone else though".

Vocabulary from the workbook

sacrificing (present participle) — giving something important so that you can have something different. Tom uses it about giving up smell rather than taste.
evocative (adjective) — makes you think of something, takes you back to a time in the past, usually through a smell or a sound. Katie says the parrot's call is "quite evocative".
vinegar (noun) — acidic liquid used in food. The trigger for Alec's seaside memory.
distinctive (adjective) — different in some way to the others so you notice it. Used twice: about shop scents, and about a sandwich chain.
pores (noun) — holes in your skin, where water (sweat) comes out. Amanda's contribution to the curry discussion.
intoxicating (adjective) — makes you feel drunk. Used about a mix of spices and incense.

In the workbook

The workbook takes you through five listening tasks, each with a question set before you press play and an answer straight after, so you always know whether you heard what was actually said. Task 5 asks something you can only answer by tracking the whole conversation: do the four speakers cover all five senses? (They don't — two are missing.)

The Extra Materials add seven true-or-false statements across the five recordings, with explanations rather than bare answers: Emma didn't find her choice easy, she found it "tricky", and the workbook tells you so. Then there's a getting the meaning from context exercise, matching five expressions taken straight from the audio — including lip-reading, not too bothered, like zombies and one very informal phrase about Jon's sister — to their definitions. A vocabulary glossary closes the unit, and the full transcript means you can go back and see exactly why an answer was what it was.

This workbook comes with the Listening 3 pack.

Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39

Common questions

Is the audio scripted?

The English conversations are unscripted — people thinking aloud, interrupting, laughing at each other. The teaching sections that set up each task and give the answers are scripted, so the instructions stay clear.

What level is this, and how long?

Level 3, and 15 minutes 08 seconds of audio.

Is the audio free?

Yes. The English conversations download free from the site; the workbook is the paid part.

Do I need the workbook to follow along?

No, but the tasks are where the listening practice happens, and the transcript is the fastest way to find out what you missed.

Which senses do they actually talk about?

All five come up across the short recordings, but the long park conversation leaves two of them out — which is the question you're asked to answer.

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