Learn To Talk About Your Job and Your Responsibilities

 

 

Hola amigos, today we are going to learn about how to talk about your job and how to talk about your responsibilities. Learn some new vocabulary! Enjoy :)

 

Transcript

Hola amigos, you are listening to the English Made Simple show, this is episode 1-0-4, one hundred and four, numero ciento cuatro.

Good morning, good day and good evening to you all. Welcome to the English Made Simple show my name is Milena from www.www.englishmadesimple.net.

Today’s show is going to be jam-packed full of goodies. Lots of things to cover in today’s show.

We are going to learn HOW to talk about your job and how to talk about your responsibilities at work, your duties at work. I will share 5 phrases that you can start using today when talking about your responsibilities.

Also, how do you answer this question: What do you do? I will share a simple tip on how to correctly answer this question. Especially, if you are concerned about which tense to use when you are talking about your job and about what you do.

So, sounds like fun? Great, let’s dive in.

We have already learnt about the preposition ABOUT in the past couple of episodes, remember episode 102 and 103 – if you are new to the EMS show, I recommend you go back in time – hop into your Time Travel Machine and go back in time – check out the last 2 episodes.

Those 2 episodes I prepared for you about the preposition ABOUT were a good segue into today’s show.

Segue – that’s an interesting choice of words, Milena. Where did you find that? What does it mean?

I know! New word for you amigos.

A lot of native speakers actually misspell this word SEGUE – they spell it as SEGWAY but it’s actually an Italian word with the Italian spelling of S E G U E, pronounced “Segue”

For many English speakers this word is hard to pronounce in the way Italians would pronounce it. So they would say it as: SEG-WAY instead of segue.

My listeners from Italy can correct me if I am wrong.

Also, something else to note, if your name is José, the English speakers would say it as Jos-ey. Because it’s hard for them to pronounce that ‘E’ at the end of the word.

Now, let’s not get distracted. Let me continue.

Going forward, I will pronounce it the way English speakers would pronounce it just because this is the way you will hear it on the news or on other podcasts that you might be listening to in English.

So going forward I will just say it as Segue. (pron. seg-wei)

Let me rephrase my earlier sentence then:
So the last couple of episodes I prepared for you amigos follow nicely into today’s episode.

Alrighty, now that you’ve learnt this new fancy-shmancy word – segue, it’s time for us to delve into today’s show.

So let’s begin…finally!

Let me begin by asking you: What do you do?

This is more common to hear in conversational English than the question: What is your profession?

I know that, in Spanish this is: Cuál es tu profesión?

But in English, we could simply ask someone: What do you do? In conversational English, you would ask someone: What do you do? And vice versa. They would ask you back: what do you do?

There is nothing wrong with the question “What is your profession?” It’s a very formal type of a question, and you would normally see this on official forms, when you are filling out forms for example, this question would appear in there.

For the purposes of today’s show, we are going to focus on the conversational English.

So, here comes the same question again: What do you do?

What you can notice about this question is that it is in the Present Simple Tense.
And this the same tense you would use in your reply.

Use the Present Simple Tense when you are responding to this question… When you are talking about your job, or about your responsibilities.

Remember guys, we use the Present Simple Tense to talk about our habits and routines and your hobbies for example.

For this reason, use this tense to describe your job or to describe what you do every day.

There we go! That was my tip on how to start talking about your job. Use Present Simple Tense.

Cool, cool bananas!

I’ve covered this in episode #24. Again, we will have to go back in time, episode #24. Which was about learning how to talk about yourself at the job interviews. To be able to talk about yourself is a popular job interview question. Check out episode #24 called – How to Answer a Job Interview Question. Tell me About Yourself.

Ok I think it’s about time we finally start answering this question, Milena!

I am going to try to answer this question as a hypothetical example.

Let’s pretend that I am really smart, I have a highly intellectual job. Really smart. I am an electrical engineer.

If somebody asks me: What do you do? I can respond with: I am an electrical engineer.

What do you do?

What are some other professions, let’s see…how you can answer this question…

I am a geo-physicist. I am a pharmacist. I am a java developer. I am a data analyst. I think in the US you would say, Data Analyst. Here in Australia and New Zealand we say Dah-tah. Although in the US and the UK you would say DAY-TAH. Either way it’s fine.

Let’s carry on.

I am a receptionist. I am an office administrator.
I am a business consultant. I am a project manager. I am a fireman. And so on.

So one thing you’ve probably noticed here is that we use an article A or AN in front of the job title.

Whereas in Spanish this is a bit different. In Spanish you would say, Soy profesora. I am a teacher.

Cool bananas, easy peasy japanesy. Hopefully you are following me so far amigos!

So you have now stated your profession.

That’s great, awesome! Now tell me again, what do you do?

Let’s try something different here, Instead of stating your profession, like we learnt earlier, you can simply describe what you do:

For example,

I am an electrical engineer. My job is to participate in electrical studies on various engineering projects such as power systems and power sub-stations.

Uhm….Mmm muy interesante.

Let’s continue.

The next example, a simple example:

I am a teacher. I teach English to anyone who wants to improve their English skills. Simple.

So we extended the answer a little bit, as you’ve noticed.

We ventured into the world of talking about your responsibilities now.

Don’t be scared! Don’t be scared now, I will share something with you to help you with answering this question with an extended answer.

Here are 5 useful phrases for you, amigos, to learn when talking about your responsibilities:

I deal with…
I report directly to…
I head the …
I look after…

And the last phrase for you to practise:

I am involved in..

Ok. Let’s put this in a few examples, shall we? For example:

I am a computer programmer. I report directly to the General Manager of Information Technology.

As a computer programmer, I am involved in various projects in the company. Depending on the projects, sometimes I even have to learn about different programming languages such as the latest one Python language.

Another example:

I am a GM of IT, this is short for General Manager of Information Technology – Gerente General del aria Informatica – I head the IT department. And I look after a team of 10 people.

I deal with some of our most important customers such as EMC, Cisco and Microsoft.

Awesome, I hope this was helpful. So I put those examples into sentences for you.
A lot of new words and phrases for you amigos.

I think it’s time I give you an assignment, homework.

For your homework, please practise answering this question:

What do you do? What are your responsibilities?

Remember, you can also check out episode #24 to remind yourselves about how to talk about yourself and your skills when you are at the job interview.

Cool bananas amigos.

Before we wrap up today’s show, I’d like to send a greeting to Desire from Brazil, thank you for sharing your story with me and thank you for your nice comments. Muito obrigado!

We covered a lot today muchachos y muchachas. If you need to listen to the show again, please go ahead. You are more than welcome to. If you have friends who would find today’s show helpful, please share this episode with your friends, because Sharing is Caring. That’s what I always say.

This brings us to the end of the show, thanks again for listening to the English Made Simple show with your host Milena. You’ve been an amazing audience as always, catch ya next time, hasta la proxima!

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