Virtuous English AcademyWork & Jobs — A2 English Vocabulary
This A2 vocabulary list gathers 30 elementary English words about work & jobs — offices, careers and the world of work. Every word comes with a simple definition, its British-English pronunciation and a natural example sentence, so you learn each one in real context. When you are ready, open the flashcards to practise and remember them for good.
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Using work & jobs words in English
Office English rewards precision, because several of these words look like near-synonyms and are not. Work, job and career sit at three different scales. Employee and employer differ by two letters and mean opposite things. And staff is one of a small group of English nouns that look singular but take a plural verb in British usage. Get these four distinctions right and your work English will sound considerably more assured than your level.
What to watch out for
Work, job and career are three different sizes
Work is uncountable — the activity or the place: I have a lot of work, I am at work. Never a work or works in this sense. A job is one countable position: She has a new job. A career is the whole professional life across many jobs: a career in medicine. So I am looking for a work should be a job, and my work is interesting and my job is interesting both work but say slightly different things.
-er gives it, -ee receives it
The employer is the company that gives the work; the employee is the person who does it. This suffix pair is productive in English and worth noticing wherever it appears: interviewer and interviewee, trainer and trainee, payer and payee. The stress also moves to the end in the -ee words, which is a useful clue when you are listening.
Staff is plural, and experience changes meaning
British English treats staff as a group of people: The staff are friendly, not is friendly. There is no word staffs in this sense, and one member is a member of staff. Separately, experience is uncountable when it means skill built over time — I have five years of experience — but countable when it means a single event: It was a strange experience. Only the first meaning belongs on your CV.
Words learners mix up
Three tables: the money, the units a working week is cut into, and the four words for the place or the organisation you work for. Every set contains at least one word learners use as though it meant the same as its neighbour.
Money for working
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| salary | A fixed yearly amount arriving monthly in your account. Singular, and you are on one: on a salary of £30,000. | The salary is paid on the last Friday of the month. |
| wage | Pay counted by the hour or the week. Very often plural in ordinary speech — wages — and singular in the minimum wage. | The minimum wage went up in April. |
| earn | To receive money in return for work done. Not win, which is what happens in a competition or a lottery. | She earns more than her manager. |
| overtime | Hours beyond the normal ones, and the extra pay for them. Uncountable, and it takes no article. | I did six hours of overtime last week. |
The earn and win split is the one to drill, because a great many languages use a single verb for both: you earn a salary and you win a match or a prize. Gain is a third word again, meaning to acquire something gradually — gain experience — so it never takes money as its object.
How the work is divided up
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| task | One thing to be done, usually small and finished quickly. Countable. | Answering emails is my first task of the day. |
| project | A larger piece of work with a goal and an end date, made up of many tasks. | We are three months into the project. |
| deadline | The date or time by which it has to be finished. You either meet it or miss it. | The deadline is Friday at noon. |
| shift | A block of working hours somewhere that runs beyond the normal day: the night shift. | He is on the early shift this week. |
A break sits inside a shift — a lunch break, a ten-minute break — and British English also uses the word for a short holiday: a weekend break. The prepositions are fixed and unguessable: you work on a project, on a shift, and to a deadline.
Where you work and who you work for
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| company | An organisation that sells goods or services. Countable, and British English allows a plural verb: the company are recruiting. | She works for a small company in Leeds. |
| business | Uncountable for commercial activity — business is slow — but countable for one firm: a family business. | They started a business together. |
| office | The room or building where desk work happens. Both at the office and in the office are normal. | I am in the office on Tuesdays. |
| factory | A building where things are made by machine. What happens there is manufacturing or production. | The factory employs three hundred people. |
Business is the one that keeps changing shape: I am here on business drops the article entirely, business is good refuses a plural, and he owns three businesses is nevertheless correct. Note also that firm is a common British synonym, used particularly of professional companies — a law firm, an accountancy firm.
Collocations that sound natural
These pairs carry an ordinary working week from the interview onwards, and most of them are phrases you will have to write in an email rather than only recognise.
deadline
meet a deadlinemiss a deadlinea tight deadlineextend the deadline
You meet a deadline — never reach, catch or arrive at one. A tight deadline means there is barely enough time to do it.
interview
a job interviewgo for an interviewhave an interviewan interview panel
The company interviews you and you are interviewed. You cannot make or pass an interview, though you can get through to the next round.
meeting
be in a meetingarrange a meetinga team meetingcancel a meeting
I am in a meeting is the standard way of saying you cannot talk, and the preposition is in — not at and not on.
experience
work experienceyears of experiencegain experiencerelevant experience
On a CV the phrase is five years’ experience, with the apostrophe after the s, or the safer five years of experience.
break
take a breaka lunch breaka short breaka tea break
British workplaces still say a tea break whether or not anybody drinks tea. The verb in front of it is take or have.
contract
sign a contracta permanent contracta temporary contracta zero-hours contract
A permanent contract has no end date and a temporary or fixed-term one does. These are the exact words used in British job adverts.
Where each word belongs
Five ordinary words that each belong somewhere particular — one to British English, one to an application form rather than a conversation, and one to a phrase that drops its article.
- colleagueBritish · neutralThe person you work with. Americans normally say coworker, and the informal British word is workmate. It never covers a friend from outside work, so my colleague from university would puzzle people.
- careerWriting · the long viewIt names your whole working life, which is why it belongs on application forms and in serious conversation. Day to day, people ask What do you do? and answer with a job. The collocations are a career in law and a career change.
- skillCountable · plural on CVsOne ability built by practice: good communication skills. British adverts sort them into essential and desirable. The adjective for a person is skilled, and skilful — one l in British spelling — describes doing something well.
- uniformCountable · with <em>in</em>You wear a uniform, and somebody dressed in one is in uniform, with no article at all. The other sense of the word, meaning the same throughout, belongs to formal writing and never appears in this topic.
- retireNeutral · one meaningTo stop working permanently because of age. Somebody who has done it is retired and the money is a pension. It is not the word for leaving one job to take another, which is leave or resign.
Sentences to try
Four frames from an ordinary working week. Put your own job, company and deadline into them.
- I have an interview for a new job on Friday.
- My colleague and I are working on the same project.
- We have to meet the deadline by Thursday.
- The staff are all in a meeting at the moment.
Questions about work & jobs vocabulary
Why can I say "three jobs" but not "three works"?
Job is countable and means one position of employment: a full-time job, three jobs, I got the job. Work is uncountable and means either the activity itself or the place you do it: I have too much work, I go to work at eight. So I am looking for a job is correct and I am looking for a work is not. The one place work becomes countable is in art — a work of art, the works of Shakespeare — which is a separate meaning.
Is "staff" singular or plural?
In British English staff takes a plural verb because it refers to the people, not the group as an object: The staff are on strike. American English more often uses the singular. Either way there is no plural form staffs when you mean the employees of one organisation, and you cannot say a staff for one person — the phrase is a member of staff. The same collective behaviour turns up in the team are, the police are and the government are.
How do I talk about my experience in an interview?
Use experience as an uncountable noun with no article: I have three years of experience in marketing, or I have experience of managing a small team. Say experience in a field and experience of doing something. Avoid experiences here — the plural means individual events you lived through, so I have many experiences sounds as though you are about to tell a story rather than list your qualifications.