Zapp! English Listening 3.21 - Movies & cinema
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).
A film from 1960, black and white, a secretary who steals forty thousand dollars, a motel called Bates' Motel, and "violins that are screeching in the background". Ben describes all of it without once saying the title, and your job is to work it out before the answer arrives. That's how this episode opens, and it sets the pattern: eight people talking about films they love, hate or can't quite defend, and a set of tasks that make you listen for the detail rather than the label.
What you'll hear in this episode
After Ben's mystery film, Katie asks Niall about his favourite, and he admits he has bought The Usual Suspects on more or less everything: "I've bought it on every single format you can buy it on." The two of them get stuck trying to remember the word for the Japanese Mafia, which is a nice piece of real conversation — the sort of gap-filling and self-correction you don't get in scripted audio.
Stuart then talks through Snatch, four overlapping gangs, illegal boxing and diamond theft, and Brad Pitt's character, of whom he says "really you can barely understand anything he says". Three shorter turns follow: Katie on why Titanic leaves her cold — "I can't stand, erm, The Titanic" — Tom on the beach landing in Saving Private Ryan and the shaky camera work that puts you "right in the thick of the action", and Laney on Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet, which she calls "very transporting".
Then the funniest stretch: Laura on her "secret love of Arnie films", including a mangled line in Predator where the delivery makes it sound as though "Cheese is like his nickname for Arnie". Kami wants the opposite — "one of those escapes from the real world" that needs no attention at all. Pam closes with thrillers, Woody Allen, and musicals that "just make me cringe so much".
Quick facts
| Episode | 3.21 — Movies & cinema |
| Pack | Zapp! English Listening 3 |
| Level | Level 3 |
| Duration | 20 minutes 10 seconds |
| Audio | Free to download |
| Workbook | Included in the all-in-one pack (€39) |
| Structure | Six listening tasks plus extra materials |
What you'll learn
The tasks are built around two different listening skills, and they alternate. Task 1 and Task 3 are gist work: you hear a long description and have to identify the film, or decide which of four things it is actually about. Task 3's answers are a good lesson in careful listening — Snatch involves an Irish character and American gangsters, but the film is about neither Ireland nor America, and if you tick those boxes you were listening for words rather than meaning.
Tasks 2, 4, 5 and 6 push you towards detail and opinion. You have to work out a genre without being told it, decide whether Katie likes anything about Titanic, identify Tom's single main reason for admiring his film, and count how many genres Pam actually names — a question that is harder than it sounds, because she mentions plenty of films and only two genres.
Along the way you get a lot of the language people really use to review films: epic, classic, psychological thriller, well directed, well acted, last man standing, well worth a watch. You also get natural hesitation and repair in quantity — Stuart correcting himself mid-sentence, Laney forgetting a director's name and Tom supplying it. Learning to hear through that is the skill.
Vocabulary from the workbook
The glossary picks up words as they occur in the conversations:
- spying (present participle) — secretly watching, and stabbing — pushing a knife into someone with a short quick movement; both from Ben's account of the shower scene
- deception (noun) — lying; spans (verb) — goes from one side to the other or from one time to another; nicknamed (past participle) — given another name, not their real name; get away with (phrasal verb) — do something bad with no punishment because they don't catch you; baffles (verb) — confuses. All five come from Niall on The Usual Suspects
- gypsy (noun) — a person who travels and lives in a caravan, a race of people; from Stuart on Snatch
- sickly (adjective) — too nice; Katie's verdict on parts of Titanic
- cheesy (adjective) — fake, not real, in bad style; Pam on film musicals
In the workbook
The 20-page style workbook carries the full set of six listening tasks with the questions printed before each conversation and the answers immediately after, so you can work alone without spoiling anything. Every conversation appears as a complete transcript, including the hesitations, so you can go back and see exactly what defeated you.
The Extra Materials section adds a second pass over the same audio with harder comprehension questions — what the woman's job is in Ben's film, whether Niall owns the Blu-Ray yet, two crimes that take place in Snatch, what happened to the camera during explosions, the name of the second actor Laura discusses. Then there's a guess-the-meaning-from-context exercise on five spoken expressions lifted straight from the recordings: picked up on it, pop in, sucked into the story, eye candy and cringe, each with three options and answers at the back. The vocabulary glossary above is printed in full at the end.
Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39
Frequently asked questions
Is the audio free?
Yes. The English conversations for this episode are free to download and always have been. The workbook is the paid part.
Do I need the workbook to follow the episode?
No, but you'll get more from it with the workbook. The questions come before each conversation, and without them you're listening without a purpose.
Are the conversations scripted?
The conversations are completely unscripted — that's why Niall forgets the word Yakuza and Laney forgets Baz Luhrmann's name. 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 Listening 3 pack. If you can follow a long unscripted description of a film plot, you're in the right place.
What's in the all-in-one pack?
The workbook for this episode plus the workbooks for every other Zapp! English episode, for €39.
Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39
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