Hi this is Ceema and I’m back with a new lesson on answering a very simple question,
which is what do you do? So when someone asks you this question, they are trying to get
information about your job or about your work. So they are very interested in knowing, what
is the job that you are involved in? What is the work that you are doing, when you go
to your office or whichever place you go to work at or what is your profession? Now because
the question is simple. The answer also is equally simple, so when you answer this question,
you can answer it in various ways depending on the context of your sentence.
So when someone asks you what do you do?
You can answer that by saying, by starting your sentence, I work
at or I work in or I work for or you can say I work with, but there are different sentences
and you can use each of these syllables in a sentence depending on your right sentence
structure. So let’s get you the right set of sentence structure, when you are going
to answer this question. Now when you use, I work at or I work for, you are going to
use it, when you are telling someone the name of the company where you are working for,
so you will say I work for, whatever is the name of the company and the same goes for
I work for, again you will talk about the name of the company. So you can say, I work
at Let’s talk Pvt ltd or you can say I work for Citibank, so work at and work for, will
always be used when you’re talking about, the name of the company. Now work in, when
do you use work in or work on? It can be used in several ways, I’ll show you a few ways,
work in can be used to talk about the place you are working for the exact place you are
working for, now there are several places we can work in, so under place, you may have,
you can say I work in an office or I work in a school or I work in a factory or I work
in a boutique or I work in a store, could be any store, retail store or a pharmacy store or I work
on a farm, if you’re a farmer or I work on a construction site. It could be really
anything. So when you are using your sentence starting with I work in, it would refer to
a place, which can be an office, an office can also be a cubical. It’s a little room
that you get for yourself to work and do your daily work activities or a school or a factory
or a boutique or a store or a farm or a construction site or anywhere or any place that you work
in, it could be anywhere, now this is the first usage of the I work in, but I work in
can also be used, when you are talking about a city or a country. So you can say I work
in Paris or you can say I work in America or I work in the UK. So I work in is used
for a place, which could include all of these or maybe more depending on the place that
you are working in or you could say I work in a city or a country, depending on what
city or country it is, you can also use I work in, when you are talking about a specific
department of the company. So maybe you can say, I work in the HR department or I work
in the department of Finance or you can say I work in the Marketing department. So you
use work in for a place a city or a country or a specific department in that company.
And the other usage of the I work in can be used, when you’re talking about a specific
area of expertise. Maybe your profession as a consultant requires you to consult people,
so therefore your area of expertise is consulting, so you can say, I work in consulting or I
work in finance or I work in law, law is your expertise. Now work for can also be used for
another way of talking, so you can use work for, when you are talking about working for
a or working directly for an important person. So you can say something like, I work for
Tom Cruise or I work for Steven Spielberg. So whenever you are working directly for someone,
you will use the word I work for. Now moving on to using work with, when do you use work
with? Well, work with is used in two different ways. The first way is when you are talking
about objects of work or the things that you work with, so if you are working in an office
or a cubical, you work with computers. If you are working in a boutique, you are working
with clothes or apparels. So it depends on the things you are working with, the objects
of what you work with, now work with can also be used when you are talking about specific
kind of people you work with, so for example, if you are a teacher who works in a school.
You work in a school but you are teaching special students, so what kind of people do
you work with? You will say, you work with students with special needs or children with
special needs. So maybe you’ve got to work with children who are autistic, you’ve gotta
work with children who have OCD or children who are miserly schizophrenic. So you are
working in a school, but you are working with children, who have special needs. If you are
say working on a construction site, you’re working on a construction site, you are working
with what kind of people on a construction site, you would work with Engineers or perhaps
Architects. So that is how you use, how you answer, what do you do in four main different
ways. I will show you some more ways of how to answer, what do you do depending on any
alternative profession that you may have, now for those of you who don’t have a job,
how would you answer this question? A lot of people do ask you what do you do? And well
you’re not working, you don’t have a job. So what do you say? You could say, I’m unemployed
or you can say I am between jobs. So these are the two different ways of answering this
question, if you don’t have a job, because you’re not working right now. So you can’t
use the I work with or I work for, it’s not gonna work that way right? So you can
use either of these two statements. Now there are some of you, the smart ones who work for
yourself, so you are doing something, you’re an entrepreneur. So if you work for yourself,
had you answer that? You can say I am self-employed. The word is self-employed or you can say I
own a small business, which is called, whatever the name of the business is, so these are
the different ways on how you will talk about your work depending on what you do and what
you don’t do, if you don’t have a job. Well, that’s it from me on this lesson on
answering the simple question. What do you do? Now that you know how to answer this question.
I’m sure you will answer it correctly and in the right context. I’ll be back with
some more lessons. Until then this is me saying goodbye