About the Author

Hilary P. https://adeptenglish.com/authors/hilary/ is a professional psychotherapist and has

practised in the United Kingdom for over 20 years. Hilary has a keen interest in language learning,
with a classical language educational background. Hilary's particular interests & experience is in
psychology, education & learning, especially online learning and language acquisition.

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Transcript For Learn English Article 382

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English Lessons That Make Learning To Speak English
Easier
English Lessons Working From Home
We like to keep our English lessons contemporary and interesting. There is no point learning English
vocabulary from a book that’s five years old, everyday English language is always changing, and the
vocabulary in use today is very different to that being used even a few years ago.

So today we talk about a very modern problem, which many of us face with lockdown restrictions
being put in place, and that's having to work from home. This idea came from a suggestion made to
us on YouTube, although it may have been an email, my memory fails me, but I know one of our
English language student listeners made this suggestion for a podcast lesson and I added it to the
ideas list we keep for new English podcast lessons.

Which as a reminder, any of you can recommend or suggest an idea for an English lesson. You never
know it might well be your idea in the next podcast you listen to. We cannot guarantee we will use
the ideas you give us, but we really try to use them all. Also, if you want your name called out to the
well over 400,000 listeners, we get each month then please let us know when you make your
suggestion, just leave a comment on our YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/c/adeptenglish or send us an email, our email addresses are always at
the bottom of the webpage https://adeptenglish.com/ at adeptenglish.com.

Transcript: English Lessons That Make Learning To Speak

English Easier
Hi there and welcome to this Adept English podcast
https://open.spotify.com/show/7ixeOS7ezPTZSaISIx2TTw . If you want free English lessons
https://adeptenglish.com/2019/12/30/english-lessons/ online, then Adept English is what you’re
looking for. We provide good English language listening material for learners to practise with. And if
you want affordable English language lessons, then have a look at our courses page online
https://adeptenglish.com/language-courses/ at adeptenglish.com.

Our courses, like Course One, Activate your Listening

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https://adeptenglish.com/language-courses/course-one-activate-your-listening/ give you hours of
practice at English language, with conversations and different voices and cost a lot less than a
traditional English language course. If you want to learn English at home, then we can help you
enormously. And for your podcast English lessons, YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/c/adeptenglish is a good place to go, if you would like to see the written
words at the same times as hearing me speak!

An accidental social experiment

Well, we are in the middle of an accidental social experiment at the moment. The situation we are in
with the virus is currently meaning all kinds of changes to our lives, particularly at the moment in
places like the UK and much of Europe, where we are in another lockdown. It’s interesting because it
doesn’t feel the same as the first lockdown that started in March. In March, April and May this year,
when you went out on the roads, riding your bike or going for a walk, it was strangely quiet.

There were roads which were normally busy, which back then had no cars on them. And you could
sit in the garden and not hear any traffic – which is unusual for the south east of England - it’s always
busy here. But in this lockdown, you go out – and things on the roads look normal – it’s busy. But
what’s affected more fundamentally is our normal social connections, our normal ways of being
with people.

So at the moment in the UK, although you could go to a restaurant or a pub in the summer and early
autumn, albeit with restrictions, you can’t do that at all. You can only go out to ‘essential shops’ so it
feels fairly normal in the supermarket and the garden centre and the petrol station, though
everyone wears a face mask. But people’s habits are at the moment different and one of the biggest
changes is of course, the number of people ‘working from home’
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-now/202005/working-home-tips-stay-productive
or ‘wfh’ as it gets shortened to.

The experiment of ‘wfh’

This has been a huge experiment. An experiment for businesses that are able to transfer their work
online, but also a huge experiment for employees. Can people be as productive as normal?
‘Productive’, P-R-O-D-U-C-T-I-V-E is an adjective meaning ‘producing a large amount of work’, ‘doing
a large amount of work’. So do you get your work done quickly and effectively – are you productive?

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It’s also been a social and a psychological experiment too. What’s it like for people working from
home? Do they feel better or worse? What are the advantages and disadvantages, the pros and
cons? https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b792-20bd8d8fa069.storage.googleapis.com/s3fs-
public/inline-images/ds-remote-work.png

Well, I guess this lockdown situation seems to divide businesses into those who cannot operate in
the current conditions at all, who’ve had to close completely or who’re very much compromised
and those businesses who can carry on in lockdown. So these industries are the ones employing
people who do the ‘work from home’. Clearly worst off here are those who can’t work at all. But for
anyone in technology service industries or in financial services jobs, working from home is perfectly
possible.

My eldest daughter is a Graphic Designer – and she’s doing pretty much the same work. She’s just
doing it remotely, at home – as are all her friends in the same industry. And I’ve known people have
interviews online and accept new jobs remotely and begin their new jobs remotely, without having
ever been face-to-face with someone from the company. It’s a strange situation, but it does seem to
be working in some ways.

What are the effects of work from home?

So that are the effects of so much remote working?

Good effects of ‘wfh’

Well, there are some positives. I think maybe people are less stressed in some ways. There’s no
getting up early to sit in traffic, dash for your train or have to stand on a busy commuter train for the
whole journey. The stress of the journey to and from work is removed. Also the cost of the journey to
and from work is removed. So that seems like a win. Also, if you have any breaks in your day – you
can go and put on some washing, watch a bit of TV, catch up with the news.

When the weather was nice, you could sit outside, maybe do a bit of gardening, go for a walk, lie on
your bed and read a book, all as a break in your normal working day. You also get to eat your lunch
at home – which could have pros or cons. Apparently, when school-aged children were questioned
about what they liked most about lockdown, many replied that the best thing about lockdown was
having cooked meals at lunchtime!

So for adult workers, some of the elements of a normal working day which are most stressful may be

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removed. It’s a bit like teleporting into work. You just switch on your computer and you’re there. But
what are the difficulties? What are the downsides?

Not so good effects of ‘wfh’

Well, people’s homes vary in terms of whether there is an appropriate location, a suitable place for
work from home. Apparently sales of desks and office chairs have increased massively. People are
spending money setting up home offices. But there may be issues over this. Whether a people’s desk
and seating is suitable for long hours. It’s easy to get problems with your back for example if you’re
not sitting in the right position. I know - this happened to me for a time because I worked at the
dining table! It took about a week to recover. My back hurt! So I’m now back to doing most of my
work in my room, not at a desk but on a sofa, because bizarrely this doesn’t seems to be bad for my
back. But what are the other problems in working from home?

Well, frustrations with technology are one of the common issues. Is your wifi reliable enough? Do
you have a good connection, or do you get into a meeting and then you find that you or other
people are ‘freezing’ on screen and that you can’t hear each other properly? ‘To freeze’ just means
you stop, you’re ‘frozen’, because your connection is not good. And if everyone else in the house is
also using wifi or doing ‘work from home’, then you might have more problems.

Not taking holiday during lockdown

People also haven’t taken much holiday this year, certainly not as much as they normally would.
There seems to be little point, if you can’t travel, in taking your holiday, your annual leave. So many
people have stayed home and not taken time off work. But there is another consideration here.

We need that downtime, we need those breaks for our mental and physical well-being. But it might
seem a bit pointless to take a week’s holiday in November, when the weather isn’t necessarily good
and you can’t really go anywhere. But we may find we need it to de-stress ourselves. Many people
arrive at the end of this year, with lots of annual leave days left, lots of holiday left, unused, which
probably isn’t good for them.

More distractions working from home

While I’m saying that some of the advantages of working from home involve having more choice
how you spend your break times, that can also be a bad thing. There are many more distractions. A

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‘distraction’, D-I-S-T-R-A-C-T-I-O-N - that’s something which pulls your attention away from what you
should be doing. A distraction. Some people find that if they’re working from home, it’s much harder
to focus on their work. They get distracted by things in their home and perhaps spend too much
time doing other things and not enough time on their work.

Time loses boundaries when you work from home

Another problem people report – two things really – time seems to go really quickly. The week ‘flies
by’ and it’s the weekend again. I think that’s because we’re not doing many of the usual things that
we would do in a normal week. We’re not ‘breaking up the week’, we’re not going to the same places
and doing the same activities or seeing the same people. One day blends into another. There’s also
a problem in deciding when our working day ends.

If you’re working from home, it’s harder to make a difference between the times when you’re
working and the times when you’re not, your own time. And what’s worse, some bosses have a
problem here too – because everyone’s working from home, they seem to be expecting people who
work for them to be available all the time. They schedule meetings at strange times of day. ‘What
else are you doing? Of course you can come to this meeting!’ Some people aren’t necessarily better
off for not having the journey to work – if the boss expects you to be working that time instead!

People motivate each other

But the biggest negative that people report, is around social considerations. Most people are
motivated by being around other people. They get energy, enthusiasm – E-N-T-H-U-S-I-A-S-M.
‘Enthusiasm’ means your ‘want to do things’, your ‘want to get things done’, your inspiration. So not
feeling as much enthusiasm is a problem. It affects motivation and whether or not you’re
productive.

People in teams benefit from working together. They swap ideas, share enthusiasm, work well. All of
that is more difficult if you’re not in the office, you’re not in the same room. And on a personal level,
if your job, your career is important to you, it’s probably meeting lots of needs on a social level.
‘Social’, S-O-C-I-A-L is the adjective we use in English when we mean ‘to do with other people’, to do
with ‘friendly relationships or companionship’. So most people working from home are not really
getting these needs met in the same way.

What can you do? Well, here are my suggestions.

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Suggestions for making ‘wfh’ work for you
* Firstly have a routine. That’s R-O-U-T-I-N-E – and a ‘routine’ is your habits, what you do every day.
So if you have a routine, it means that you keep the same start and finish times for your work. You
might eat lunch around the same time every day. You sleep at the same times. Keep some structure,
some routine.

* Secondly, don’t over-work. It’s easy to work too much in this situation, so keep a log, record how
many hours you’ve worked a week. And make sure you switch off and spend time doing some
things. Make a clear distinction between ‘wfh’ and just ‘being at home’. You need downtime.

* Thirdly, get out, go for a walk, a run, a drive. A change of scene can give you a change of
perspective, if it’s all getting too much.

* Fourthly – speak to your friends, your family online, over the phone. We can’t see people we love or
people we like spending time with at the moment. But there are more ways now to keep in touch
with other people than every before. So Facetime, Skype, Zoom, Whatsapp – whatever you use. Just
try to stay in touch with other people. Make sure you get your social needs met too.

* And just another idea – why not sign up to a language exchange website? There are numerous
websites where you can do this - find someone else who’s learning English, just like you, meet new
people, talk to them online, and improve your English at the same time! What could be better than
that?

Goodbye
Well, there are some suggestions for you. Don’t forget to go to adeptenglish.com if you would like
more English lessons. But enough for now. Have a lovely day. Speak to you again soon. Goodbye.

Links
* Working From Home https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-now/202005/working-
home-tips-stay-productive

* Graphic https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b792-20bd8d8fa069.storage.googleapis.com/s3fs-
public/inline-images/ds-remote-work.png

* Other English lessons https://adeptenglish.com/2019/12/30/english-lessons/

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* Activate Your Listening Course https://adeptenglish.com/language-courses/course-one-activate-
your-listening/

* Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/7ixeOS7ezPTZSaISIx2TTw

* YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/adeptenglish

* 7 Rules Of Adept English https://adeptenglish.com/language-courses/free-7-rules-of-adept-

english/

* English language courses https://adeptenglish.com/language-courses/

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First published: November 2020

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