Easy English Conversation: “What do you do?”

Do you know how to answer the very common question “What do you do?” in English? Learn natural, easy ways to talk about your job, your studies, and other situations like being unemployed, retired, or a stay-at-home parent. You’ll learn key expressions and useful grammar. I will show you the difference between phrases such as “I work in”, “I work at”, “I work for”, and “I work as”. We will also look at common mistakes, and go over tips to sound more natural and confident. https://www.engvid.com/easy-english-conversation-what-do-you-do/ More of my Easy English Conversation videos: https://youtu.be/zM6j8XU7P0I https://youtu.be/OIqDAF8szq4 Watch the full playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaNNx1k0ao1sBSm9fJBbbQXx2JRXIym3H In this lesson: 0:00 How to answer "What do you do?" in English 0:48 I'm a _______. 1:44 I work in ________. 3:00 I work at _______. 3:31 I work for _______. 4:33 I've been working there for/since ________. 6:20 full-time, part-time, weekends... 7:47 No job? 9:37 Retired? 11:32 Student? 14:27 I studied _______ at _______. 14:59 I graduated from _____ in _____. 15:19 Conclusion Transcript: Today we're going to look at a very common question, "What do you do?" So "What do you do?" means what kind of work do you do? Are you a student? It's a very common question during small talk, when we're meeting people for the first time. So today we're going to look at how to answer this question. We're going to look at how to answer this question if you work. How to answer this question if you're in school. How to answer this question if you are retired. And how to answer this question if you don't work or you're looking for work. So let's get started by looking at what do you say if somebody says, "What do you do?" So, the question is "What do you do?" or "What do you do for work?" You might hear these questions, they mean the same thing. So how do you answer this question? Well, first you can say your job title. I'm a... And then you write the job. Now, a lot of students forget that they need "a" or "an" depending on if the job starts with a vowel sound, but let's look at some examples. I'm a veterinarian. I'm a teacher. I'm a doctor. I'm a lawyer. So this is very simple English, but something you really need to know because we ask this question all the time. What do you do? I'm a teacher. The next thing you might say about your work is the industry you work in. You might do this if your job is more complicated, or maybe you don't have a specific title. So for example, I'm a teacher. I work in education. So, my industry is education. Another industry would be healthcare. So if you're a nurse, you work in healthcare. Maybe you're a physiotherapist, you work in healthcare. Other people work in finance, especially if they work, you know, in some sort of business. Maybe you work... So maybe you work for the government. You can say, "I work in government." I work in IT. So these are all different industries. I work in construction. So there's a lot of different industries. The main thing I want to point out here is this preposition. I work in, and then you say the industry. Okay, this is a little bit different from the next sentence I have. I work at... We usually follow "at" with the name of our company. I work at Sears. I work at Amazon. I work at Air Canada. So, whatever the name of the company is, you can write the company name here. Now, the next sentence is very similar to this sentence. We often use them in the same way. So, after "for", you can also put the name of a company. I work for Air Canada. I work for Sears. I work for Amazon. There's a slight difference between these two words, but it's not a big difference. We often use them in the same way. So, you can say, "I work at" with the company name, or "I work for" with the company name. So let's look at an example. So imagine you say, "What do you do?" Oh, I'm an engineer. I work in IT. I work at ABC Company, or I work for ABC Company. So, this is very standard. You will probably answer this question a lot. This is a great way to answer this question. Another thing we often talk about is how long we have been working at a place. People want to know when you started at your job. So, you might say, "I'm a lawyer. I've been working at my company for five years. I've been working at my company for one year. I've been working at my company for two months." So, this sentence is a little bit difficult in terms of the grammar, because we have the present perfect continuous. So, if you haven't studied this, you might see this and say, "Ooh, it's a long sentence." But it's a very important sentence because we use it all the time in conversation. So, if you memorize this sentence, it's very useful. […]