Exam Topic: Work 2 (Choosing a Career)

Jobs, work and careers are of course very common topics in IELTS. If one of these topics comes up in your Speaking Exam, the examiner may ask you some questions about choosing a career or choosing a university course. 

Choosing a career can also be a writing topic. You may get an essay question about it, or there may be a diagram in Writing Part 1 about career choices. 


Typical Speaking Questions

Let's look at some speaking questions about choosing a career:

1. What factors do people need to consider when choosing a career?   
2. Do you think there's any difference between males and females when it comes to choosing a future career?
3.  Do you think parents should let their children make their own choices about a future career or should the parents make this choice?
4. Do you think it's useful for schools to give careers advice to students? Why (not)?
5. Are there any other ways in which young people can get some guidance on what career to choose?  

          (Note: these questions are from the ielts-yasi.englishlab website, which is a good place  
           to find practice questions on many topics.)



Vocabulary

Below is a text about career choices. There is some useful vocabulary here that may help you answer questions like the ones above. 

Read the text and do the exercises.


SECTION ONE

Choosing The Right Career For You In the later years of high school, parents and teachers start asking questions like "What are you going to do when you leave school?" and "What careers are you interested in?" For some high school students, these are easy questions - they've always known what they wanted to do, and they have no doubts. But for most, choosing the right career seems impossible at that point in their lives. Of course, there's really no specific time at which you must decide what career to pursue. These days, quite a few people hold down a job throughout their 20s just to pay their rent and living expenses, but only find their real vocation later. A lot of them feel that having some first-hand experience of working life will ultimately help them make a better career decision. Keeping that in mind, there's no need to feel pressured if you're not sure what career would suit you. You should definitely think about it, though, because it's probably one of the most important choices you will ever make. You can start choosing a career while you’re at high school, at university or even when you graduate. You can even defer your decision to settle on a particular line of work until after you have already started working. What is most important is the process you use to settle on a particular line of work. How Do You Go About It?

EXERCISE ONE

Complete the following collocations from the text: 
a.   to pursue a     ---    on     career    work    decision      

b.  to defer a     ---    on     career    work    decision        

c. to settle      ---    on     career    work    decision     something    

d. a line of      ---    on     career    work    decision         

What do these collocations mean? Post your answers in the comments box below.


EXERCISE TWO

A. Choose words from the list to complete the text:

     (Note: there's one word you don't need.)

First, you need to establish your likes. What do you enjoy doing? Is there something that you wouldn’t mind doing every day even if you weren’t getting paid for it? If there is, think about how you can do that for a   ---     training    inspires    applied    source    passion    recommend    living    assess   . It must be said, though, that not everything you have a    ---     training    inspires    applied    source    passion    recommend    living    assess   . for can be translated into a viable    ---     training    inspires    applied    source    passion    recommend    living    assess   . of income. Still, sometimes it’s worth aiming for ideals. Next,    ---     training    inspires    applied    source    passion    recommend    living    assess    your strengths. What are you good at? Note that this isn’t the same as what you are trained in. It might be something you can do even without going through extensive professional    ---     training    inspires    applied    source    passion    recommend    living    assess   . One effective way to identify your strengths is to think about the compliments you get from other people, and decide whether there’s any particular skill that    ---     training    inspires    applied    source    passion    recommend    living    assess    these compliments. Then try to think of a career in which that strength could be    ---     training    inspires    applied    source    passion    recommend    living    assess   .

B. Explain these phrases:

     i.  a viable source of income        

     ii. extensive training                     

Questions:

First of all, what are "factors"? Are they

Writing

Here's one possible essay question on the topic of choosing a career:

After leaving school or university, young people should choose a job or career that they love, rather than one that pays the best salary. To what extent do you agree with this statement?

On the 'IELTS SImon' website, there's a page which offers some ideas to help you answer this question. Follow this link to visit the page. 

Also notice that the topic here is very closely related to the topic of Job Satisfaction. You can do some exercises about job satisfaction vocabulary on this page. 




ANSWERS TO VOCABULARY QUESTIONS

1a. to pursue a career                b. to defer a decision
  c. to settle on something        d. a line of work

2a. - you can do that for a living.
      - everything you have a passion for
      - a viable source of income
      - assess your strengths
      - extensive professional training
      - a particular skill that inspires these compliments
      - that skill could be applied. 

2b. to broaden something = to make it wider
      (broad is the opposite of narrow.)