📙 Part 2: Describe a job that is useful to society

You should say: what job it is, how you know about this job, what types of people do this job, and explain why this job is useful to society.

This episode's vocabulary

Hassle (noun) - (a situation causing) difficulty or trouble.

Diversity (noun) - the fact of many different types of things or people being included in something; a range of different things or people.

To constitute (verb) - to be or be considered as something.

Orderly (adverb) - well arranged or organized.

Knowledgeable (adj.) - intelligent and well-informed.

Energy-saving (adj.) - designed to make economical use of electricity, gas, or other forms of energy.

To transmit (verb) - cause (something) to pass on from one person or place to another.

To reconstruct (verb) - reorganize (something).

On an individual basis (phrase) - considering each person or thing separately rather than as part of a group.

Costly (adj.) - costing a lot; expensive.

Questions and Answers

R: Well, I'm a teacher, so of course, I'll say my job is pretty important to society. Basically, it involves helping others to become good at something. I mostly teach English these days, so I focus on helping people to get better at using the language to communicate effectively. I've been doing my job for over 10 years now, so I hear about it all the time. But even before that, it was always on the periphery. I always heard about someone teaching English and working abroad with people all over the world to make a difference. And of course, before then, my dream was to be a teacher, though I wasn't sure about what kind I wanted to be then. I focus on English, but different teachers help people develop their skills and knowledge in different areas. There are people who pass on knowledge and skills related to all kinds of topics, and being able to that effectively saves people so much time, money and hassle, because they can access it much more easily than if they did it by themselves. And when it comes to the kind of person that gets into teaching, I think that's a pretty broad group of people, really. As far as I can tell, no two teachers are alike, and there's a diversity of opinion in terms of what constitutes best practice. But generally speaking, it seems like they're all reasonably orderly and knowledgeable people who have an interest in others, just based on my experience with them. I suppose it's so useful for the time and energy-saving qualities, especially in larger groups. If you can transmit or reconstruct knowledge and skills with a large number of people in a short time, then that saves a lot of work that might otherwise never have been done, or that has to be done on an individual basis, and that can be quite costly.

M: And what about your friends? Do they think it's useful?

R: My friends that are teachers probably think it's useful. Yes.

Discussion

M: Right, dear listener, so a job that is useful to society.

R: Talk about yourself.

M: Yeah, you can talk about a doctor, or you can talk about yourself. Yeah. So I mean not yourself, but a job that you do, and just say that it's useful. Okay? You are an IT specialist, it's useful, but, like, you talk about a job. So in general, like IT specialists are really useful. Or you are a shop assistant, or, I don't know, a driver. Pretty much any job is useful to society. Okay? So, yeah...

R: Can you think of any job that's not useful to society?

M: Hmm, maybe murderers... Murderers. People who murder other people. Not useful.

R: Well, hitmen?

M: Hitmen. Right.

R: Or hitwomen. But there's the strategy for this one. If you're asked about a job that's useful, talk about your own job.

M: Or feel free to steal Rory's story and talk about a job of a teacher. So you can say that teachers are pretty useful in our life. Or you can lie and say, well, I'm a teacher, so my job is super useful. It's pretty important to society. Dear listener, we use society without any article, okay? So it's important to society, it's useful to society. Please remember it. Write it down, and also in your essays, do not use any article. So it's important to society. It's important to people. This job involves helping others. This job involves solving problems, creating, I don't know, new things. So this job involves doing something.

R: What does your job involve?

M: My job involves creating courses and new content, and making people happy and making you, dear listener, more knowledgeable. Band nine way. Yeah, that's my job. You can say that teachers focus on helping people, or drivers focus on driving. So people with this job focus on doing something. I've been doing my job for 10 years. So if you talk about your own job, so you can use present perfect continuous,. I've been working as an IT specialist for 10 years. I've been working as a shop assistant for two years. And you can say that I do make a difference. Or people who have this job make a difference, so they, well, make the world a better place.

R: Well, if you make a difference, then you do something important.

M: Yeah, like teachers make a difference, doctors make a difference, they save other people's lives. You can say that my dream was to be a teacher, or my dream was to be a doctor to make a difference in this world. And teachers help people develop their skills and knowledge. Doctors help people to improve their health.

R: I thought you were going to say, doctors help people to avoid dying.

M: Yeah, help people to stay alive.

R: Very important job.

M: And doing this job effectively saves people so much time, money and money.

R: And hassle.

M: And hassle. Yeah, what's a hassle?

R: Confusion or difficulty. Please tell me that C-2 word, come on.

M: No, the Cambridge English doesn't have a level for this word, hassle.

R: Oh... Well, I'm telling you now, it's a C-2 word.

M: Yeah, it's a good one. It's informal, so it saves me a lot of hassle. So difficulty or trouble. So drivers, doctors, teachers, if they work effectively, they save people so much time, money and hassle, like different people get into, different people get into teaching, or, like smart people get into driving.

R: But if you get into something, that just means that you start doing it.

M: So people who are into science get into science.

R: What kind of... I mean, I'd said it was very broad. But what do you think, Maria, what kind of people get into teaching?

M: Ooh, I think people who want to communicate to other people. People who want to travel, perhaps, and teach in different places of the world. And people who enjoy sharing what they know, and also people who think that they are the best in the world, they know everything.

R: Super competent people.

M: Yeah... You can say that that's a pretty broad group of people. So who gets into medicine? Who gets into IT? That's a pretty broad, like a big group of people. But in general, they are reasonably knowledgeable. So people who get into teaching are knowledgeable and orderly.

R: That just means they like organization.

M: Yeah, they are organized. And also those people who have an interest in others, so people who have an interest in other people, in others, get into teaching.

R: So they're interested in people. It is important to point out all of this is based on my experience. I could be totally wrong.

M: Yeah, you can start off with it. Like, well, based on my experience, knowledgeable people usually get into teaching. And then, why is this job useful? You can say, I suppose it's so useful because... What helped you to organize this answer?

R: Well, being an English teacher helped me to organize the answer. Because, really, what do we have to do here? We have to talk about a job. So as long as you talk about your job, you probably do all of these things that you're required to do. I did them in the order that they are on the task. But if you just sit and speak about your job for two minutes, you will probably cover all of these things quite nicely. So like I say, I started off with just a small preamble saying I'm a teacher, so I'm going to talk about this job. Let's imagine that you're a student, though, and you don't have a job. You could talk about the job that you want to have in the future as well. And that way, you're talking about something that you know about, and all of the high-level vocabulary that's there, then how long I've known about it? Well... Or how I know about it? I know about it because I do the job. But you can also talk about your childhood too, because this is usually when we hear about jobs. And the same thing is true for the different kinds of people that get into a job. If you do a job, then you know about the kind of people who will get into it. But even if you don't do the job, you could probably guess. You could say, I don't really know the kind of people that do this job, however, if I were to guess, and then you could talk about that. And then we just rounded off by doing exactly what was required of us explaining why the job is useful to society. It saves time. And really, I feel like, isn't that what all jobs do? They're supposed to save people time and energy and reduce the hassle? So really, you could take any job and insert it into where I said the word teacher, and that would probably describe it quite accurately.

M: Yay! And now, Rory's quiz time, vocabulary from Rory.

R: Oh, yes, it's the part of the show where I ask Maria questions about what I said, and she has to guess the word or the kind of grammar that I am talking about. So Maria, let's start at the very, very beginning, I used a word to signal that I was going to summarize the key points of what the job involved or what the job was. But what was that word?

M: Basically.

R: Basically. Yes, that's a good way to introduce a small summary when you're speaking. Probably don't do it in writing. Then we moved on to how I heard about the job. And I said that it was always at the edge of my awareness. But that's not the word that I used to describe it. I used some other word, a more advanced word.

M: Periphery

R: Yes, the periphery is the edge of something. So the periphery of the country, could be the borders. The periphery of your awareness could just be knowing about something but not investigating it thoroughly. Oh, question number three... This is a word that I use to describe difficulty.

M: Hassle.

R: Yes. If something is a hassle, then it's difficult or annoying. Then we have question number four. I said that people have different kinds of opinions about who or what constitutes a good teacher, but I didn't say they have different opinions. Instead, I used a phrase to describe this. What was that phrase?

M: There's a diversity of opinion in terms of...

R: Excellent. Yes, fantastic. Diversity just means different. Well done. Maria! Four out of four. Nice job!

M: Yay!

R: And hopefully everyone else at home got four out of four as well. Thank you for listening!

M: Yay! Now, dear listener, your job is to pick a job that's useful to society, all right? Or still, Rory's story and talk about teachers. You can talk about doctors as well, or your own job. Like, well, I'm a driver, I'm an IT specialist, and it's super useful to society. To society, no article, okay?

R: And since you're talking about teachers, it's important to point out that I am a teacher when I have three slots in the schedule. You can find a link to this in the description of the episode if you're interested in finding out more.

M: Yay! We'll get back to you in our new episode, speaking part three about employment in general and jobs and working. Bye!

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