Naming Occupations (Novice)

Practice on Your Own

• List some of the most common jobs in any society such as teacher, mechanic, bus driver, chef, custodian, doctor…
• Next to each job, write the name of a person who does that job. Then write a full sentence: Ashley is a doctor. Carlos is a teacher…
• Practice how to ask about someone’s job: “What do you do?” or “What is your job/occupation?”
• Now for each job that you have listed, write a question and answer like this:
  • What does Ashley do? Ashley is a doctor.
  • What does Carlos do? Carlos is a teacher.
• Also practice asking and answering out loud.
• Can you name the places that are related to each occupation? Teacher and university, chef and kitchen, mechanic and auto shop… What other words do you know that might be associated with different jobs?

Practice in Conversation Session

• Read the jobs that you have listed out loud for your conversation partner. Make sure that you pronounce each word correctly.
• Now give the list of jobs and names that are associated with each job to your conversation partner. Have a conversation like this for each job:
  • Conversation partner: What does Carlos do?
  • Student: Carlos is a teacher. (You can include more information like “He works at a school/university …”)
• In the next activity, your conversation partner names a job and you associate it with some vocabulary (nouns and/or adjectives) that you have learned. For instance:
  • Teacher (hard/poor/student/exam)
  • Doctor (patient/medicine/money)
  • Chef (hard or easy/food/restaurant/tasty…)
• Ask your conversation partner what adjectives or nouns are commonly associated with each job in the culture of the language you are learning. Notice if there are differences in the ways different occupations are viewed in this culture versus in your own culture.