3. Listening: Interview, Interview Questions and Related Grammar

Listen again to recording 13 that comes with your coursebook (Bonamy, D. (2011). Technical English Level 3 Coursebook. Pearson Longman). You will hear part of an interview Reme Gomez has for a new job. As you listen, choose the correct option from the drop-down list to complete the interviewer's notes of the interview. After you finish, complete the related questions, using the same list of words. (Alternatively, you can alternatively read the transcript on p. 120 in your textbook).

 

In the previous task, you could see these two questions:

1)      How long have you worked in this position?

2)      How long did your apprenticeship last?

Why is the first sentence in the Present Perfect tense, while the other one is in the Past Simple tense? Well, if you studied material of Units 1a, 2a and 3a carefully, you probably have the answer. The Present Perfect used in the first sentence indicates that Reme Gomez started working for the company in the past and is still working for the company at present. However, she completed her apprenticeship in the past and is no longer studying at the school. Therefore, the Past Simple tense is used in sentence 2. Study some more examples illustrating the difference in these two tenses in the table below:

Present

Perfect

for

since

from… until now

Reme has worked at MultiPlastics for seven years.

She has had a job as a junior technician since 2011.

She´s been at MultiPlastics from 2008 until now.

Past

Simple

for

from… to/until…

ago

Reme was an apprentice at Mu/tiPlastics for three years.

She worked as an apprentice from 2008 to/until 2011.

She joined MultiPlastics seven years ago.

 

Now, practise this grammar point in this exercise. Your task is to complete questions based on answers provided. If you think that the task showed you might need to brush off the grammar related to the Present Perfect and Past Simple tenses, go back to Units 1a, 2a and 3a in this Moodle course.

However, the Present Perfect tense and the Past Simple tenses are not the tenses you may come across at interviews. You may also hear the Present Simple tense to talk about your regular duties in your position and the Present Continuous tense for describing your current activities (perhaps in contrast with the past and future activities). These tenses were covered in Unit 2a of this course, so you should have no problem completing this matching task. The tasks give illustrative examples of all the tenses mentioned above and some other questions and answers typical of an interview.