Writing an essay about someone’s job – A2 English writing

Writing an essay about someone’s job

Use specific vocabulary

When you write an essay about a topic, such as ‘work’, you should first learn about different words or expressions that people use to talk about that topic. Then, you should try to use them in your essay. These are some words that are often used to talk about someone’s job:



You can make a list of some of these words and then use them in your text:

• work as a
• work in/for
• work part time/ full time
• earn (not much/ quite a lot/ a lot of money)
• salary
• work ___ hours a day
• work from to ___
• be responsible for

Work vs job

Job

A job is a profession or occupation; it’s the activity that a person does to earn money. Examples of jobs are teacher, nurse, doctor, taxi driver, office clerk, construction worker, graphic designer, police officer, etc.

You can have a temporary job, a permanent job, a part-time job or a full-time job. When you don’t have a job, you are unemployed. When you are unemployed, you may apply for a job. If the job interview goes well, you may get the job.

A job is also a particular task or something that you have to do:

• I need to do a few jobs at home. I need to cut the grass, paint the fence and fix a window.
• ‘Why didn’t you make the copies I needed?’ ‘Because that’s not my job. Making copies is Richard’s job.’

Job is a COUNTABLE noun. This means that we can say ‘jobs’ (in the plural), and we can say ‘a job‘.

• He’s had many different jobs. (NOT many different works)
• This is a difficult job. (NOT a difficult work)

Work

The word work is often a verb:

• Where do you work?
• She works in a hospital.

Work can also be an UNCOUNTABLE noun. So we cannot say ‘a work‘ or use the plural form ‘works‘.

We use the noun work to talk about the effort or activities that we do when we are doing a/our job.

• I have a lot of work to do.
• What time do you start and finish work?
• This is very hard work.

Work may also mean the place where people do their job.

• How do you go to work?
• I have lunch at work.