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Hello everyone and welcome to English Pod. My name is Marco.

My name is Catherine. And today we’ve got part three of an exciting series we’ve got for you at the elementary level.

That’s right. As you may remember, this is a series that we’re studying all about a job interview. So in the first part, we just talked about the introduction. The second part was talking about your personal background and now we’re going to talk about your educational background.

Okay. So, the key topic here today is education. Let’s take a listen to this dialogue and we’ll be back in a minute.

The DialogueInterviewer: Now, if I look here, I see that you completed a BA in English.

Rebecca: Yes, that's right. After graduating from high school in New York, I attended York University in the UK. My major was English and my minor was business. I completed my BA in 2004.

Interviewer: Yes. I'm pleased to see that you also got a distinction.

Rebecca: Yes, that's right. I've always enjoyed studying. My friends say I'm a bit of a bookworm, but my father always pushed us to succeed at school.

Interviewer: Well, it looks like his encouragement paid off, Rebecca. So, how about extracurricular activities at university?

Rebecca: Well, I've always been keen on writing, so I became the editor for the university student newspaper, which I really loved. Also, I volunteered for a group called Shelter to help the homeless in New York.

Interviewer: What did that involve?

Rebecca: Providing warm meals and shelter, especially in the winter months. I found it really fulfilling to be part of that group.

Interviewer: I'm sure. Okay. Now, let's move on to your work experience. Shall we?

Rebecca: Yeah. Okay.

Language TakeawayAll right. We’re back. So the girl was talking about her education, about her university, and she talked about some very interesting words. So why don’t we take a look at those in Language Takeaway.

So at the very beginning, Mr. Parsons, who’s the interviewer here, asks Rebecca about her background and says, "I see that you completed your BA in English."

Okay, so we have an acronym there, a BA.

This stands for Bachelor's or usually a 4-year degree at the beginning of your university studies.

That’s right. So, it’s a type of degree, right? A BA is, as you say, your bachelor’s degree, and it usually takes four years.

That’s right. You have a Bachelor of the Arts, BA, but you also have a Bachelor of Science, which is a BS.

So, as you can tell, one is for the arts, like art history, music, things like that. The other is for sciences like physics or chemistry.

Very good. All right. So she has a BA in English. So she obviously studied the English language in university. Then she moved on to talk about her major and minor.

That’s right. So as you know a degree is not just a degree in the arts in general, but it usually has a focus or an area of focus. So her area of focus, her major, was English. This is the most important part of her studies. So many of her courses, most of her courses at university, were in English.

That’s right. But she also has a minor in business studies.

Okay. That means she also studied business and business studies. That’s not as important as her English studies, but it was very much a part of her degree. So let’s say that when she was studying in university, 70% of what she studied was related to her major, English, and maybe 30% was her minor, which was business studies.

That’s right. And she goes on to talk about herself and her friends who describe her as a bookworm. This is a really nice adjective and very common in English.

That’s right. So if you are a bookworm or you describe yourself as a bookworm, it means that you like to study a lot. You like to read a lot of books.

So bookworm is just like what you said, is someone who really likes to read, someone who’s always reading. Maybe someone who lives in the library.

That’s why you call them a bookworm. They live in the library or they read a lot of books.

All right. So that’s the noun bookworm. Now moving on to other parts of university. When you’re studying, you’re not only studying English or sciences and things like that. Sometimes you also do other activities or other things.

That’s right. So you have your schoolwork which is during school. It’s English and business studies for this woman Rebecca. But you also have what you do outside of school. This is called extracurricular activities.

So that’s a long word. Extracurricular.

That’s right. So extracurricular means it’s not in the curriculum, right?

That’s right. It’s outside of school.

So, it’s not really like a specific subject or something that’s related to your studies. If you don’t do extracurricular activities, it’s okay, right?

That’s right. A lot of people don’t do any extracurricular activities, but many people do. For example, writing for the school newspaper or playing soccer.

Exactly. So, those are extracurricular activities. Anything that you want to do in university apart from studying, playing soccer, writing, etc.

And it’s not just university. You can do these in high school as well. Okay. Very good. So, those are the words that we have picked out for you today. I think they’re very specific to education. And I think we should go back, listen to the dialogue again, and we’ll be back in a bit with Fluency Builder.

Fluency BuilderAll right, we’re back. So, now let’s start off with our first phrase on Fluency Builder.