talking about jobs and work in english
Hi, in this lesson you will learn to talk firstly about your job and work in English
and in the second half of the video we'll look at specific work-related vocabulary
starting with verbs and adjectives and nouns and finally idioms and expressions
that take your English to the next level!
This section is very good training for those of you taking exams
such as Cambridge First Certificate or CAE or IELTS.
I will put the times down below
so you can go to that part that interests you most first.
Right, so first up, which questions might people ask you about your work?
Firstly, the most basic question is something along these lines,
they all mean kind of the same thing
and this question is to find out more about your profession.
So, they could be:
Where do you work?
What do you do?
What do you do for a living?
What sort of work do you do?
What line of work are you in?
What kind of company do you work for?
Who do you work for?
So, how can you reply to these questions?
You can use the expression, "I'm a..."
when you say the name of your profession.
So, for instance: "I'm a doctor, a teacher or an engineer."
or maybe you're student and you're doing an internship
or a work placement to gain experience in a certain field of work
that you're interested in going into.
Or, maybe you're in training.
you could say, "I'm training to be a doctor or an engineer."
Maybe you do voluntary work,
that is some kind of work where you don't get paid you, simply want to help
and are doing something for experience or an impact it'll have.
You might be a freelancer,
that is someone who works on different projects with different companies
instead of being employed by just one company.
or maybe you can say, "I'm self-employed."
that is you are not working for any particular company
but you're finding work for yourself or you're having your own business
If you have got your own business you could say,
"I've got my own business." or "I run my own business."
another useful expression is, "I work in..."
here without the article the/a,
we refer to this when we're talking to an area of work.
Maybe you don't have a specific job title and you just want to say what your field of work is.
So, for instance, "I work in education" or the health service or finance.
You can also say, "I work in..." with an article to say where.
So, "I work in the accounting department of X Y Z company."
or I work in the marketing department of a company.
So, if you use "the" or "a" you're talking about the actual physical place.
So, for me I would say, "I work in a school teaching English."
Or, if you want to say who you work for
you'd say, "I work for..." and then the company
so it could be Google or Barclays Bank or the Ministry of Education.
So, for instance you could say:
I work for a software development company.
I work for an English language school
I work for a law firm or I work for myself.
So, putting that all together you could say something like this:
"I'm a software engineer. I work in telecommunications actually I work for British Telecom."
or I would say,
"I work for an international company which teaches languages to children from 5 to18 years old."
Think about what you could say, about your job.
Practice saying the sentences out loud using the expressions "work in" and "work for."
When you introduce yourself
it's good to vary how you talk about your job and use different expressions
as this makes you sound more interesting and natural.
So, now let's look at how to talk about your job in more detail.
Here we're talking about the hours you work.
So friends might might ask you,
"When do you start or finish work?"
another way of saying this would be,
"When are you off?" or
even "When do you get off work?"
How would you answer this?
Maybe you work shifts,
this is when you work for a period of time
and so you do say, the night shift, you work a set number of hours during the night
and these periods of time can change.
So you might then do a night shift
and then follow that a day shift.
And companies often employs shift workers
so that they can keep their business working 24 hours a day.
So maybe you do shift work,
or maybe you might do extra hours this is called overtime.
So, maybe you normally finish work at say five
but due to a big project
you're going to do overtime
so you could say,
"I'm doing overtime tonight, I won't be home till late."
Or maybe your boss might ask you,
"Can you come in early?"
Again it's to do extra hours either at the beginning or the end of the day.
From time to time it's normal that you might need "to call in sick."
for example, "John called in sick today."
What about other times when you don't work.
Maybe you've been doing lots of overtime and you need a break.
You could say, "I need a vacation."
I need a break, I need a holiday.
Someone might ask you if you've had a break recently
and ask if you've had any time off lately.
maybe you work
three days a week so you could say I work part time,
rather than those than those who work full-time
Or maybe you work fifty percent of the time
so you job share
you share one job between two people.
So what about if you don't have a job?
If you're out of work.
You could say "I'm unemployed" or "on the dole."
But it's often better to say something like, "I'm between jobs at the moment."
which implies that it's a short-term situation.
Whereas unemployed is more something
that maybe it's more long-term, so maybe more negative.
Or I am on a break
or maybe you're taking a year off and then returning to the same company
This we call taking a sabbatical year.
"I'm taking a sabbatical."
or maybe you're taking some time out
to travel, spend time with the family.
This means that you're not working at the moment
because you want to focus on something else
Or maybe you've finished your career and then you would say, "I'm retired."
What about you?
What's your situation? What hours do you work?
Do you often work overtime? Does your boss ask you to come in early?
Are you between jobs at the moment?
OK, so now we've talked about your company
where you work, what you do.
Let's now look at how we can describe your job in more detail.
What do you actually do all day?
So for me I would say,
I have to teach children English,
I'm responsible for four classes and
most of my time is spent inspiring young people
and helping them to enjoy learning English.
Think about your job. What can you say using these expressions?
Think about all that we've seen so far.
Practice talking about your job and work.
It's a great way to get to know people and engage in really meaningful conversations.
OK, so moving on to part two.
In this section we will look at words and phrases
that often appear in exams
and vocabulary that would be very useful for you to know
if you're going to talk about work or you're taking the FCE or IELTS.
They're also very useful for you to talk about your work.
So, now let's look at the verbs used when take talking about work.
So I'm gonna tell you a story about Bob and his work situation.
All the verbs I will use will appear on the screen
to help you understand.
So, let's get started.
Bob left University and decided to apply for a job
which he saw advertised in the newspaper.
He filled in the application form
and a few weeks later was asked to attend an interview.
He was offered the job that same day.
As he lived in a small town outside the city
he had to commute every day.
He was good at his job and very soon he was promoted.
However the company he worked for was having problems.
Two people were dismissed for stealing,
and two of their friends resigned in sympathy.
The directors decided to lay off five more workers
because the company couldn't afford to keep them
and the managing director decided to retire early.
The atmosphere was so bad that Bob eventually decided to hand in his notice.
OK, so now let's look at some adjectives you can use to describe your job or work.
How do you feel about your work ?
Do you like your job?
Maybe you find the work interesting
stimulating
maybe it's satisfying
or creative
I hope it's rewarding
or challenging.
What about if you don't like your job?
It may be boring or difficult
or exhausting,
thankless,
mind-numbing,
dead-end,
soul-destroying.
OK, so that's adjectives.
Now let's look at nouns associated with work.
So again I'm going to tell you a story
and the words will come on the screen.
A computer company
had a vacancy for the position of salesperson and decided to
advertise for a new employee. A lot of candidates with good qualifications and
references applied for the job and after all the interviews had finished the
directors made a shortlist of the best candidates and then invited them to come
back for another interview. The person who eventually got the job was very
happy after all she would receive an annual salary of 25,000 pounds with a 5%
increment twice a year, a 15% commission for each computer she managed
to sell, excellent perks such as private health insurance and a company car as
well as a company pension to make sure she'd be well off when she retired and
also the chance of a promotion from salesperson to Sales Manager if she was successful.
All in all, her future prospects looked very good.
So finally, let's look at some idioms and expressions that can be used when
talking about work.
What about if you do manual work in a factory?
You're called a blue-collar worker, the collar is here.
Whereas a secretary who works in an
office would be described as a white-collar worker.
Sometimes workers are not happy with the conditions at work
so they refuse to work, they go on strike.
Or if you work for a very small amount of money you might say
that you are working for peanuts
so you might put in for a rise
this means that you ask for more money.
Maybe your boss makes you work very hard for your money
you could say that he's a slave driver
but be careful because if you continue to work very long hours you might burn yourself out.
If this happens you won't be able to continue working such long hours.
Sometimes some lucky people get given a golden handshake
when they leave a job
maybe it's because they are retiring or leaving early and helping the company by
leaving the job. This means that you get given a large sum of money when you leave.
I hope you can be described as a high flyer as this means that you have
great potential and ambition and will probably do very well at work.
Maybe your boss might ask you "to carry the can" for a mistake he made.
this means that he's asking you to take the blame for a mistake he made.
When a company continues to work as usual even despite difficulties
you can say that it is "business as usual."
A headhunter is someone who looks at top managers
and tries to find them jobs in a new company.
And finally if you don't do your job right
you might get fired
this means that you lose your job.
I hope this doesn't happen to you!
Now it's your turn...
Speak out loud using some of the new vocabulary you've learned today.
What do you do for a living?
Write it down in the comment section below and I promise I'll give you some feedback.
So, that's it for today. I hope you feel more confident with any conversations or topics to do with work and jobs.
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So I hope to see you very soon
and thanks for watching.
Talking about jobs and work in English