#178: Talk about Working from Home | Confident English Conversations
Working from home has become a hot topic of conversation everywhere. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, you may be working from home for the first time.
That means you definitely understand the benefits and challenges of a work-from-home lifestyle.
But how do you talk about that in English?
In today’s Confident English lesson, you’ll learn 31 new idioms, phrasal verbs, collocations, and more to have advanced-level English conversations — and do it with confidence!
The video focuses on 4 major topics for how to talk about:
- where you’re working (we have 7 different ways to talk about working away from the office)
- how you’re working (for example, have you been able to develop a productive work-from-home routine?)
- the challenges of working from home
- common experiences of communicating with colleagues online
Working from Home — Vocabulary for Advanced-Level English Conversation
For an in-depth explanation of these idioms, phrasal verbs, and collocations, be sure to watch the video. I also include examples of how to use this vocabulary.
How to Talk about Working from Home Temporarily
- To do your job remotely
- To work remotely
- Telecommute (to telecommute)
- Work from anywhere
- To be a digital nomad
- To work virtually
- To be on a virtual team
How to Talk What It’s Like Working from Home & Creating Productive Routines
- To break up your day
- To block out time on your schedule
- Deep work/Deep focus time
- Brainwork
- Minimize context switching
- WFH Flexibility (work from home)
- To create time to unwind
- To thrive at work
How to Talk the Challenges of Working from Home
- To steal a few minutes to do something
- To stay on track
- To shut out the world
- To have blurred lines between personal/professional life
- Difficulty to find work/life balance
- Always-on work culture
- To feel/to be burned out
- Social isolation
- To feel cut off/closed off from the world
Communicating with Colleagues Online — Common Experiences
- Let’s Zoom at [time] on [day]
- My Internet/connection is unstable
- To lose your connection/to have a bad connection
- You’re frozen
- You’re on mute.
- We lost ______.
- To not have the “bandwidth” to take on a new project/think about a solution, etc.
Have you been working from home temporarily? Or is it how you always work?
Share the benefits and challenges you’ve experienced. Try using some of the new vocabulary in the lesson.
Plus, I’d LOVE to know what advice you can share for how to be more productive working from you. You might have the perfect recommendation for someone else in the Confident English Community.
As always, you can share your comments and questions with me below.
~Annemarie
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Thanks Annemarie!! I’m a teacher and I found this lesson really helpful with my students (adults). You’re so understandable and clear with your examples. Kisses from Argentina!
Thanks for the comment, Milena. I’m so glad it was helful.
Hello, Anne Marie,
Thank you very much for your time to give us what we need in this quarantine. I’m so happy to learn from your work that support me a lot. Still i need more to get and to stay on track all the time with YOU.Waiting for more.
regards
zeina
Hi Anne Marie ,
Thank you very much for your hard and deep work .
All this expressions and collocations are very usefull for me
I work in music and translations and each time , in every english class I learn more things and I feel that your work is very relevant and it takes into account all facets of the topic
Grands remerciements ,
Radu
Hi! Thank you for your explanation! It is always good to watch your videos! In order of COVID-19, I’ve started to work remotely. It’s been about 3 months now and it’s interesting how things change over the time, in the beginning I didn’t have to anything except work, I was stressed because I had a lot of distractions and was feeling burnt out. Nowadays I am able to create time to unwind. I started to plan my week, it helps me a lot to shut out the world and to separate my professional life from my personal one.
Hi Annemarie! Thank you for your interesting explanation!! You always the best! During lockdown, my job has completely turned into a remotely one and it has been really challenging and demanding. I tried to break up my day and to shut out the world, but with a 16- mounths baby, it wasn’t so easy!! I often felt as if I was stealing a few minutes of time to get something done! However I can also say that it has been useful because I learnt how to develop a deep work and to stay on a track in spite of few… Read more »
Thank you for such an amazing lesson!I think people who experience being in always-on work culture may feel burned out and even be depressed.To not have the “bandwidth”to take on their normal things is the signal to shut out the world and create time to unwind.
Hi Anna, I’m so glad this was helpful. And yes, an always-on work culture is certainly dangerous as it leads to high burn out. It’s better to find time to step away. 🙂
Hi Annemarie!
Thanks for this video so helpful to have conversations during this unprecedented context.
I used to work at a office, but currently I am working remotely. And, it is being a big challenge for me. I have many difficulties to find work /life balance, especially because I have had to navigate between the work and the kids homeschooling. It has been too hard! Fortunately, this week my girls finished their classes!
I appreciate the vocabulary that you have shared with us. It will contribute to conduct virtual meetings and have more confident conversations!
Hi Flavia,
Thank you for sharing about your experience and I’m thrilled this lesson was helpful. I hope now that your daughters are finished with school, you’ll find it easier to create some work/life balance.
Thank you for this lesson AnneMarie! I started to work at home by april 2019 and I having a business job in remote until pandemic Covid 19.
I think that block out time for every task is most important, so equally shut out the world in order to have the maximum focus on we have to do, and take relaxing time after each one 🙂
Regards
Cinzia
Hi Cinzia. Thank you for your comment. The most challenging part of working from home is to be self-motivated at time management. It’s important to stick to a schedule, manage your energy, and focus on your work. And, of course, as you said, take breaks and relax during a day.
Hi Annemarie ! Thank you for this very useful and interesting video. The vocabulary is really up to date and a lot of people are stuck when they have to describe their current working situation if they do not find the right word. I am a self employed english and russian trainer. A part of my classes are one to one sessions so you can imagine that for the last 3 monthes I had to do a lot of Skype lessons and to find enough “bandwidth” to work online. (I do not if I can say that. Please, correcte me… Read more »
Hi Olena, I’m so glad it was helpful to you! I’m certain that right now you’re very busy with online lessons and you can definitely use “I need to find the bandwidth for all my classes.”
I totally agree that it’s hard to minimize context switching. It’s something I have to think about and be aware of daily. It takes a lot of self-control, which isn’t easy.
Thanks so much for sharing your experience!
thanks for the class. very useful for this reality! i am working at home and it is difficult sometimes, but I try to clock out time on my day to unwind and do another things for example listen a podcast because working at home can be difficult if you don´t know to have blurred lines between personal and profesional life. I have always been woking at office and working at home is incredible useful to conciliate but sometimes you can feel burned out.
Hi Maribel. Thank you for your comment. You’re right. Working from home might be challenging. When your personal life and your work are both under the same roof, it’s hard to switch off. That’s why it’s important to set up clear boundaries and make time to unwind to prevent being burned out.