Hello, and welcome back.
Now, I know it has been a while.
I haven’t made any new lessons in the past couple of months.
I’ve had a lot on my plate.
I’ve had a lot of projects going, even though I’ve been reading all of your comments and
responding to as many as I can almost every single day.
Well, I’m back now, and I’m back today with the first in a series of lessons on advanced
spoken English.
These lessons will help you to improve your listening ability, and most importantly, your
speaking skills, both for everyday communication and if you’re preparing for an exam with
a speaking component like the IELTS.
Now, I’ll make sure to put the text of what I say up on the screen, and I’ll also make
sure to highlight any useful vocabulary that you can take away from this lesson.
Now, the way we’ll do this is we’ll take a topic, and I will be interviewed on the
topic, sort of like in an exam.
That is, somebody will ask me questions and I will answer those questions as naturally
as I can.
That is, I’m not going to try to simplify my answers.
I’m going to answer as I would in real life.
Now, in this first lesson, I thought we’d take the topic of work.
So, we’ll start by talking about my work and what I do, and then we’ll move on to
more abstract and advanced questions.
Now, after the conversation ends, we will discuss the most important vocabulary items
from the conversation.
So, if you’re ready, let’s begin.
Let’s talk about work.
Tell me about what you do in your job.
Well, I’m an English teacher.
It’s probably more accurate, though, to say that I’m an ESL teacher, ESL being short
for English as a Second Language.
I specialize in teaching English as a Second Language to adults.
Even though I’ve taught classes for children, the bulk of my experience has been in working
with adults, especially in business English and exam preparation courses.
Now, recently, my focus has shifted to teacher training and doing research in the field of
language acquisition.
That’s the study of how people learn languages.
Do you like your job?
Absolutely.
I love my job.
See, teaching is something that I’ve always gravitated towards naturally ever since I
was a kid.
Now, whenever there’s an opportunity to share a piece of knowledge that I have with
somebody and see that person take that knowledge and use it to make their life easier or better
in some way, I eagerly take that opportunity to teach.
So, teaching is something that I enjoy immensely, and it’s the perfect job for me.
What was your dream job when you were younger?
Well, that’s a tough one because like most people I wanted to be different things at
different times.
I remember wanting to be a pilot when I was a little kid.
I had a lot of toy planes that I would play with.
As a teenager, I would daydream about being a celebrity.
But the first job that I can probably say was truly a dream job for me was computer
programming.
I was probably in my late teens when I got into it.
That’s when I discovered the joy of coding.
Because if you think about it, the job of a software programmer is essentially to solve
problems in the context of computers or information technology.
So, it was that problem-solving element that really drew me to programming.
Now, even though I ended up becoming a teacher, I still see my present job as a series of
challenges that need to be overcome.
And that’s really what keeps me going.
Do you think most people work in jobs that they love?
Probably not.
Why not?
Because I think you have to be incredibly fortunate to have grown up in the right circumstances
that allow you to discover what really drives you to be able to make a career out of it.
I think that the traditional route that most people take is that they graduate from college
and then they either take the best-paying job that’s available to them at the time,
or they take the job that they think offers the brightest career prospects for the future.
And a lot of people do so out of financial necessity.
Because you have to put food on the table.
That’s the primary concern.
Do you think it’s important for people to enjoy what they do in their job?
I think so.
I mean, whatever your job is, there’s always going to be some things about it that you
find unpleasant.
There’s things that I don’t like going.
I don’t like having to write up student reports.
In my previous job, I had to sit through a lot of meetings, and I used to hate doing
that because I thought those meetings were a waste of time.
I thought they were unproductive.
So, it’s unrealistic to expect that everything you do has to be enjoyable.
I think, instead, the key is to have enough challenging tasks in your job, or at the very
least, finding a way to do mundane tasks in a way that challenges you.
I think you have to look at it like a video game.
Because when people play video games, what they do is every time that they play the game,
they try to get a higher and higher score.
So, I think that they key is to keep challenging yourself.
What kinds of activities do people find challenging?
In their jobs?
Well, it depends.
I’d say it depends both on the job and the kind of person that you are.
Because like I said, I like tasks or activities that require me to use my analytical ability,
tasks that have that problem-solving element.
But another person might like a job that’s more social because for them, it’s about
the human dimension.
And, you know, having to work with people, and getting things done through working with
people can be challenging in its own right.
And so, I think it depends.
What happens when people don’t find their job challenging or satisfying?
Well, it becomes hard to get out of bed and drag yourself to work every morning.
Because if you hate your job but you continue doing it, then it means that you’re doing
that only for the paycheck that it brings in every month.
And that kind of motivation, doing it just for the money is hard to sustain over the
long term.
And people of my generation, us millennials, are probably a lot more sensitive to this
that our parents were.
Because it’s very common nowadays to hear people talking about retiring early.
That’s the idea that you save up a lot of money with a view to retiring as quickly as
you can.
So, they want to escape the rat race?
Exactly.
You know, they don’t want to spend their lives slaving away in a corporate office just
to make ends meet.
They want to get out of the rat race.
Do you think it’s a good thing for a person to retire early, say at 40 rather than 60?
Well, sure.
I mean, if that’s what you want to do, then it can be great.
You can do all the things that you’ve always wanted to do with your life.
You can start checking off your bucket list.
Now, there’s an –and I don’t say this in a bad way– but there’s an obsession
among millennials with travel.
A lot of people nowadays want to explore the world, they want to experience different cultures,
taste different cuisines, things like that.
So, if you retire early, then you’ll get to do that.
Although, I would think that if you have found your true calling in life, then you would
never want to retire because what you do then becomes such a fundamental part of your identity,
that you’d never want to give that up.
Maybe as you get older, you might start to work less, but you wouldn’t want to give
it up entirely.
Do you think people will work less in the future?
Maybe.
It’s conceivable that as technology advances people will work less and less in the future.
Who among us could say that we don’t depend on a great deal of technology just to keep
us afloat in our daily lives?
Because I know for a fact that my own life would come to a standstill if my fridge or
my washing machine or my microwave oven stopped working, at least until I found alternative
ways of doing those things.
But I think that even more than as individuals, as societies, so much of what we take for
granted today runs on a foundation of technology, and if that broke down, then we’re looking
at large-scale chaos in society.
Why do people use so much technology in their everyday lives?
To make their lives easier.
See, I think the ultimate aim of technology is for human beings to not have to do any
work at all, where we just chill on our couches and order our robot servants about to get
whatever we want.
Would that be a good or a bad thing?
Well, if it made people lazy and if it made useless to the point where they couldn’t
get anything done without the use of machines, then it would be a bad thing.
But, if people used automation to automate more routine or tedious tasks to free up time
or resources that they could use to become more productive and to solve problems –I
keep going back to problem-solving– but if people can use that to solve problems and
to think more, then I think it would definitely be a good thing.
all right I think that's a good place for us to end this conversation let's now go on
and discuss the most useful and the most important vocabulary from this lesson all right I'm
back here with this document now before we discuss the vocabulary I just want to suggest
that after you watch this discussion that you go back and listen to that conversation
again because it will help to really reinforce the vocabulary in your head and another thing
you can do as you rewatch the conversation is you can pick particular sentences and practice
saying them after me because that will help you to improve your pronunciation now I'll
make sure to make this document available for you to download I'll put a link in the
description I'll also include the entire transcript of the conversation so that you can read it
in your own time okay let's discuss the vocabulary now item number one is to gravitate to or
gravitate towards this means to be attracted to something sth means something so to be
attracted to something or to move towards something and this expression comes from the
word gravity and how in physics you know two bodies are naturally attracted to each other
this is the sentence that I said in the conversation teaching is something I've always gravitated
towards naturally ever since I was a kid meaning that I've always been naturally attracted
to teaching okay number two that's what keeps me going this expression means to give energy
or enthusiasm to continue doing something I see my present job as a series of challenges
that need to be overcome that's what keeps me going meaning that's what keeps me motivated
okay number three is fortunate this is an adjective that simply means lucky I think
you have to be incredibly fortunate to have grown up in the right circumstances so I'm
saying you have to be lucky to have those circumstances number four is put food on the
table this is an idiom it doesn't actually it doesn't refer to actually putting food
on the table it just means to provide food and other necessities for your family you
have to put food on the table that's the primary concern I said it in the context of people
taking the best paying job that's available to them they do that because they want to
provide for themselves and for their family they want to put food on the table number
five is unproductive this is an adjective and it means not producing much not giving
benefits or results I thought those meetings in my previous job were unproductive I thought
they were a waste of time because they weren't very useful in the interest of consistency
I'm just going to make this a lowercase n cuz everything else here is lowercase okay
let's move on to number six number six is mundane it's pronounced mundane mundane is
an adjective that means ordinary or routine and because something is ordinary or routine
it's uninteresting or boring the sentence from the conversation is you have to find
a way to do mundane tasks in a way that challenges you alright number seven is the expression
with a view to this is an idiomatic expression and it means with the aim of it's the idea
that you save up a lot of money with a view to retiring as quickly as you can that is
with the aim of retiring as quickly as you can number eight is rat race this is quite
a popular idiom and it refers to a lifestyle in today's modern world in which people constantly
compete with each other for money and power especially in their careers in their work
life so this refers to how people in today's world are engaged in such competitive jobs
even to just provide for themselves and for their family so the sentence is they want
to get out of the rat race now here they refers to Millennials if you remember from the lesson
the word millennial refers to people who were born between the Year 1980 and 2000 that's
what I meant when I said Millennials the millennial generation now myself being born in the 1980s
I'm a millennial okay number nine is slave away this is another idiom and it means to
work very hard for little reward they again Millennials don't want to spend their lives
slaving away just to make ends meet so they don't want to work very hard just for a little
reward now if you're wondering what make ends meet means that is our next item to make ends
meet is one more idiom it means to make just enough money to buy food and other basic things
they don't want to spend their lives slaving away just to make ends meet okay let's move
on to number eleven there are two items in number eleven because they're so connected
in this context that I didn't want to separate them the two items are check off and bucket
list to check off means to mark something as correct or finished usually a checkbox
a checkbox is a little square box that you can tick you find it on forms and on websites
so if you check off a checkbox it means that you mark it as correct or finished a bucket
list is a list of things you would like to do before you die now you know some people
say I'd like to visit this or that place at least once in my lifetime or I'd like to go
skydiving or surfing at least once before I die so the sentence is you can start checking
off your bucket list meaning that if you retire early you can start doing all those things
that you want to do number twelve is obsession obsession means you’re always thinking about
a particular person or thing there's an obsession among Millennials with travel okay number
13 is calling it's often accompanied by this word true we say this or that job is my true
calling or we talk about finding your calling your calling is the job that you were born
to do that you are destined to do I would think that if you have found your true calling
then you would never want to retire that is if you have found the job that you were destined
to do and you would never want to give it up number 14 is great deal this idiom has
nothing to do with business deals it simply means a large amount who among us can say
that we don't depend on a great deal of technology that is a lot of technology to just keep us
afloat in our daily lives afloat is an adjective it means floating on water and not sinking
so as we saw in the sentence from the previous example I said who among us can say that we
don't rely on a lot of Technology just to keep us afloat I'm not actually talking about
floating on water here I'm saying that if that technology stops working then the consequences
can be disastrous almost as if we would sink in the burden of our daily lives all right
number 16 is come to a standstill this means to stop completely I know for a fact that
my own life would come to a standstill if my fridge and my washing machine stopped working
that is my life would stop completely and I wouldn't be able to do anything number 17
is take for granted this is a popular idiom and it means to think that something will
always be available and because you think something will always be there always be available
you don't appreciate it fully so much of what we take for granted runs on a foundation of
technology that is a lot of the things that we think will always be there in society those
things actually run on a technological foundation the word chaos is a state of total confusion
and disorder if that foundation of technology broke down then we're looking at large-scale
chaos in a lot of confusion and disorder because nothing would be working in society number
19 is chill or chill out this means to relax the ultimate aim of technology is for humans
to chill on our couches and order our robot servants about any Jetsons fans here alright
number 20 is free up free up means to make time or resources available for use if people
use automation to automate routine or tedious tasks to free up time and resources then they
could become more productive and they wouldn't have to spend a lot of time doing the same
tasks over and over again alright that brings us to the end of our vocabulary discussion
again I'd like to remind you to go back and watch the conversation again so that you reinforce
all this vocabulary you can also download this document from the link in the description
if you like this lesson let me know and let me know if you want me to make more lessons
on advanced speaking I hope you enjoyed this make sure to LIKE and subscribe as always
happy learning and I will see you in another lesson