Culture Shock Stories: Zapp! English Listening 3.5

One speaker in this episode says she stood politely at the train doors saying "I was no after you, no after you" until she realised she would never get on board and had to change her own behaviour. Another came home to grey skies, drizzle and orderly queues and felt like a stranger in his own country. That's what this unit is built on: six people talking about culture shock without a script, and you working out where each of them was.

What you'll hear in this episode

Before the conversations start, we check three words you'll need: culture shock, to queue and surly. Then come six listening tasks, each with a guessing game attached — which country is this person describing?

Emma's account is full of physical detail: heat and humidity, a suit and high heels and "loads of makeup", an apartment with the kitchen "pretty much just in the hallway", and an office where nobody could go home before the boss. The answer is Japan. Tom's is the odd one out — the traffic from the airport, "this blanket of grey cloud", the queuing, the beer. The country turns out to be the UK, his own, after a long time away. Katie's story covers no queues, old ladies pushing onto trains, and the delicate business of disagreeing with a boss without embarrassing him — she calls it "saving face". That's China.

Amanda talks about being told to take off anything sparkling, then about beaches busy at five in the morning, and about watching a chain ripped from a German tourist's neck "out of the blue" — Rio. Stuart remembers shop assistants who made him feel he was "causing a problem wanting to buy them", the worst and best meals of his life in one day, and "the waves lapping on the shore" in Mexico City. Eve, on a volunteer programme in Nicaragua, ate so much gallo pinto that "I think I exhausted the amount of rice and beans that I can eat".

Quick facts

Episode	Zapp! English Listening 3.5 – Culture
Episode number	3.5
Pack	Listening 3
Level	3
Duration	19 minutes 23 seconds
Workbook	Included in the all-in-one pack

What you'll learn

Two skills run through the unit. The first is listening for gist: you don't need every word to identify a country from climate, working hours, queuing habits and food. The second is listening for detail, tested with true/false statements that punish careless listening — Amanda changed the way she dressed (true), but nobody stole money from the German tourist; it was a chain.

There's also a lot to notice about how people actually speak when they're remembering something. Watch how often speakers restart a sentence mid-way, stack "really, really" for emphasis, or quote their past thoughts directly instead of reporting them: "What is this place?", "Why am I here?" Eve makes a point most learners will recognise — "it's one thing to study a language in a classroom and it's another to move to a small town where everybody speaks Spanish" — and she says it in one long, self-correcting stretch of speech, which is exactly the kind of sentence textbooks never give you.

The extra listening questions push you back into the audio for small facts: how long Eve stayed, who she lived with, what Stuart did last on his second day, whether Amanda blamed the whole country.

Vocabulary from the workbook

The workbook glossary covers the words you'll need for these conversations:

high heels (noun) – tall shoes women wear; part of the smart office dress Emma describes
sweating (present participle) – having water coming from your skin because you are hot
drizzling (present participle) – raining lightly; Tom's welcome-home weather
resemble (verb) – look like; Amanda was told to remove anything that could resemble jewellery
sparkling (present participle) – shiny / reflecting the light
seductive (adjective) – it makes you want it; how Amanda describes the mix of caution and ease
aggressive (adjective) – acting like you might be violent, like you want to fight, rude and angry
relevant (adjective) – important to the situation or topic of discussion
stroll (noun) – slow, relaxed walk; how Stuart's difficult day ends
barrier (noun) – something which stops a person or thing continuing / going further, as in Eve's language barrier

What's in the workbook

The workbook for this unit contains the full transcript of all six conversations, so every hesitation and false start is there in writing when you want to check what you heard. Alongside it you get the answers to each country-guessing task, the true/false statements with explanations of why each one is right or wrong, and a set of extra listening questions that send you back for detail rather than gist.

There's also a guess-from-context exercise built from real lines in the recordings: blend in, struggle, live up to, out of the blue, contradictory and stroll, each with three options and an answer key. The glossary above closes the document.

This workbook is part of the Zapp! English all-in-one pack, which collects the workbooks for every episode across all levels for €39.

Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39

Common questions

Is the audio free?

Yes. The English conversations are free to download from Zappenglish.com. The workbook is the paid part.

Are the conversations scripted?

No. The six speakers are talking unrehearsed about their own experiences. The teaching sections — the vocabulary check, the task instructions and the answers — are scripted, so the instructions stay clear.

Do I need the workbook to follow the episode?

You can listen and guess the countries without it. The workbook is what turns it into study: transcript, answers, extra questions and the vocabulary exercise.

What level is this?

Level 3, from the Listening 3 pack. If you can follow a person telling a story with false starts and self-corrections, you're in the right place.

Which countries come up?

Japan, the UK, China, Brazil, Mexico and Nicaragua — but don't read the answers before you listen.

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