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Hello everyone and welcome to EnglishPod. My name is Marco.

My name is Catherine and today we’re bringing you another elementary level lesson as a part of our interview series.

That’s right. This is part two of the interview series and the last part we talked about. Well, a brief introduction when you arrive to a job interview. But on this occasion, we’re going to talk a little bit about yourself and your life.

That’s right. So, this is the most personal part, I think of an interview. Let’s take a listen to today’s dialogue and we’ll be back in a moment to talk more about the things you’ve heard.

Now, Miss Childs passed on your resume to me and I’ve had the chance to look it over. I must say I’m quite impressed.

Thank you very much. I’ve tried to keep it short and clear. If there’re any questions please feel free to ask me.

Well yes, I do have a number of questions, but perhaps first you could give me a brief overview. I’d like to get a little bit of an idea of your background.

Yes of course. Well as you can see from the resume I’m 27 and grew up in Brooklyn, New York, although our family moved to London when I was quite young, at around 16.

Ah I see, so you were actually educated in Europe?

Yes precisely. Although I was born in the US, I would definitely call London home.

But as you see I’ve actually spent a lot of my life moving from country to country.

My Father was in the oil business before he retired so we also spent a number of years in Saudi Arabia too.

Very interesting. So it seems you had quite an adventurous childhood.

Absolutely! We were never still for too long. But now I’m really looking to settle down.

I see. Okay, well let’s move on to discuss your education shall we?

Sure.

All right, we’re back. So obviously this person had a very interesting life. And they used some pretty interesting words there. So why don’t we take a look at five keywords that we have prepared for you on language take away.

Language take away

All right. So, the first word that we have is right when Mr. Parsons talk to Ms. Childs and he said that he was very impressed with her resume.

All right. So, someone says I’m impressed when they think that something that you did, or something about you is very interesting or good or better than most peoples.

That’s right. So, you’re kind of amazed, you’re kind of, you like wow, right? And so, this is an adjective. I am impressed.

That’s right. So, teachers sometimes say this. Maybe when you do really really really well on a test, they say, hey Marco, I’m really impressed. You got 99%. Parents say this too, friends, family. So basically, this is a way to say good job, wow.

Right and there’s also a verb. So, this is the adjective to be impressed and the verb form would be to impress someone. So that’s obviously if you impress your teacher by studying, your teacher will be impressed.

That’s right. And following that, Mr. Parson has some questions about Ms. Childs background. That’s right. He asked her for a brief overview of her background. So, we have two interesting words there. An overview, what is an overview.

An overview is like a summary. It’s basically a way to ask for someone to give you a lot of information in very few words.

That’s right. So, you don’t really want too much detail. You want somebody to tell you their life in detail. You just want a brief summary.

Right. So, not I was born in August 11, 1979 and was– and then I went to this and— No, this is basic simple, you know, this is where I’m from, this is where I went to school, the end.

And well, he wanted a brief overview of her background. What exactly is her background?

Well, think about the word back. Okay, that means behind or in this case background is your personal history. So, you could ask someone what’s your background, it means where you from, or you know what have you been doing up to now in your life.

That’s right. And precisely when he asked her about her background. Now she’s starting to talk about her life that in general terms, as we said it’s an overview. So, she said that she’s 27 and she’s from Brooklyn etc. So, she starts giving very general information about herself and her life.

Exactly. So, when she starts to do this, Mr. Parson has more specific questions about her life because he wants to know details so he asks her then where she was educated. So, this phrase to be educated is very important.

That’s right. So, he’s asking her, you studied in Europe.

That’s right. To be educated means, to have someone teach you or to go to school somewhere. So, for example I was educated in America. Where were you educated Marco?

I was educated in Chile.

Wow, so you’ve been educated in a number of different places, right? At home and in a different country.

Right. But you can also specify the University name, right? For example, I was educated at Harvard. Can you say that?

You can. Or I was educated at a number of different schools.

So, you can say I studied or I was educated. All right, and well apparently, she was moving around from Europe, United States. So, Mr. Parsons says, wow it seems that you had an adventurous childhood.

Okay. This is a great adjective, adventurous. You can say a person is adventurous. So, Marco is very adventurous. He likes to jump out of airplanes. But you can also say that an experience is adventurous, like moving around a lot as a child.

Right. So, I guess adventurers can go hand-in-hand with exciting or very interesting full of emotions.

That’s right.

Okay

Adventure, adventurous, so a person can be adventurous and we actually had a lesson about this when we described personalities. You can say someone is adventurous.

Exactly.

All right, very good. So, five keywords that we just took a look at. Why don’t we go back, listen to the dialogue again and we’ll be back to talk a little bit more on fluency builder.

Now, Miss Childs passed on your resume to me and I’ve had the chance to look it over. I must say I’m quite impressed.

Thank you very much. I’ve tried to keep it short and clear. If there’re any questions please feel free to ask me.

Well yes, I do have a number of questions, but perhaps first you could give me a brief overview. I’d like to get a little bit of an idea of your background.

Yes of course. Well as you can see from the resume I’m 27 and grew up in Brooklyn, New York, although our family moved to London when I was quite young, at around 16.

Ah I see, so you were actually educated in Europe?

Yes precisely. Although I was born in the US, I would definitely call London home.

But as you see I’ve actually spent a lot of my life moving from country to country.

My Father was in the oil business before he retired so we also spent a number of years in Saudi Arabia too.

Very interesting. So it seems you had quite an adventurous childhood.

Absolutely! We were never still for too long. But now I’m really looking to settle down.

I see. Okay, well let’s move on to discuss your education shall we?

Sure.

All right, we’re back. So, we have four phrases for you on fluency builder prepared and let’s start on with the first one.

Fluency builder

Okay. So, the very beginning, Mr. Parsons is continuing what he was saying in our first part. So, Mr. Parsons is talking about Rebecca’s resume and he says someone, the secretary should pass it on to me so, this verb to pass on. This is really important. What does this mean?

Well, the secretary, Ms. Childs passed on Rebecca’s resume. That basically means she, Ms. Childs received it and she didn’t keep it. She passed it on or she gave it to another person, in this case, Mr. Parsons.

Okay. So, this implies, this shows that something doesn’t stay with one person, like you said Marco but moves from one person to another person. So, for example, my mother told me to pass this message on to you. The message is not for me, it’s for you.

I think also with physical traits like maybe if your mother had green eyes, you can maybe say, my mom passed on her eye color on to me.

That’s right. So, you got it from her.

All right, so that’s what happened with the resume and he said well, she passed it on. And I’ve had the chance to look it over.

Okay. So, think about this as a chunk, as a group of words that we use together, to look something over. We can say, hey, Marco, when you have a minute, can you look this over for me?

Okay. So, that means to examine or to take a look.

Take a look at, that’s right. So, to look something over or to look it over.

All right. So, basically to examine, maybe in close detail, right? You actually take the time to read it.

That’s right.

Okay. And then later on they started talking about her background as we know she was from Brooklyn. She grew up in Brooklyn and then she moved to London. And so, Rebecca described how she spent most of her life moving from country to country.

Okay, from country to country. This means that she moved to many different countries, okay? So, if I live in America all my life, I never moved from country to country. You can say this about many different things, from place to place, from town to town. It means that you live in one, you go from one place to another.

That’s right. So, as you said, if you replace the noun country, you can say from town to town. You can even say from house to house. I went from house to house asking for money.

That’s right. So, from—two—

Exactly. So, from something to something. And for our final phrase, she was talking about how she’s moved around so much that she’s actually ready to settle down.

Okay, to settle down. This is a really important phrase and I think it’s something a lot of people do when they’re may be in their 30s or 40s. They don’t want to move anymore. So to settle down means to stay in one place.

Exactly. So, you stay in one place. And it can have a lot of different meanings as well. For example, to get married, many people say that’s settling down. It means you want to stay in one place and have a family.

Or to buy a house because it means that you will live there for a long time.

Exactly. So, to settle down. So, a lot of interesting phrases there, a lot of words and this is as we said, part two of our series. So, I think it would be worthy for us to listen to this dialogue one last time and we’ll be back to talk a little bit more.

Now, Miss Childs passed on your resume to me and I’ve had the chance to look it over. I must say I’m quite impressed.

Thank you very much. I’ve tried to keep it short and clear. If there’re any questions please feel free to ask me.

Well yes, I do have a number of questions, but perhaps first you could give me a brief overview. I’d like to get a little bit of an idea of your background.

Yes of course. Well as you can see from the resume I’m 27 and grew up in Brooklyn, New York, although our family moved to London when I was quite young, at around 16.

Ah I see, so you were actually educated in Europe?

Yes precisely. Although I was born in the US, I would definitely call London home.

But as you see I’ve actually spent a lot of my life moving from country to country.

My Father was in the oil business before he retired so we also spent a number of years in Saudi Arabia too.

Very interesting. So it seems you had quite an adventurous childhood.

Absolutely! We were never still for too long. But now I’m really looking to settle down.

I see. Okay, well let’s move on to discuss your education shall we?

Sure.

All right, we’re back. So, this is part two of a 10 part series of interviews. Now we just talked about the background and I think there are different ways of talking about your background, right? This is maybe your personal background.

That’s right. So, you can talk about your personal history, your personal background, where you were born, where you were educated, where you grew up. But a lot of times we also have to talk about other parts of our background like our work background or like next week or educational background.

That’s right. So, part three, we’re going to take a look at your educational background. And it’s going to be very important because I think in many interviews people have a hard time describing what they studied or maybe describing exactly what they did during university or college or Master’s degree or something.

Exactly. And we’re not talking about elementary school or high school, we’re specifically talking about university background here. So, like you’re saying Marco, what was your major? What was your minor? What was your area of study? These are great great great phrases that are very important for an interview. And so, we hope that if you have any questions, you let us know. Our website is Englishpotd.com and stay tuned for next week’s episode.

That’s right. Okay, so we’ll see everyone on the website and until next time. Bye.