Casa ESL · conversation questions

28 ESL Conversation Questions About Work & Careers

Work questions serve business-English students and general classes alike — and they invite conditionals, ambitions, and opinions.

Warm-up questions A1–A2 · beginner

  1. What is your job? Do you like it?
  2. What time do you start and finish work?
  3. Do you work with nice people?
  4. What was your first job ever?
  5. Do you prefer working alone or in a team?
  6. What job did you want as a child?
  7. Is your commute long? How do you travel?
  8. What do you do in your lunch break?
  9. What is one thing you like about your work?
  10. What job would you never do?

Discussion questions B1–B2 · intermediate

  1. What makes a good boss? Have you had one?
  2. Would you take a boring job for double your salary?
  3. How is work in your country different from other places?
  4. What skill should everyone learn for the next ten years?
  5. Tell me about a work day you will never forget.
  6. Is working from home better? What did we lose and gain?
  7. How important is the company's mission versus your salary?
  8. What would you change about your industry?
  9. Describe your ideal working day, hour by hour.
  10. When is it right to quit a job?

Debate & depth C1–C2 · advanced

  1. Will AI take your job — and should it?
  2. Is the 40-hour work week an obsolete industrial artifact?
  3. Universal basic income: safety net or hammock? Argue both.
  4. "Follow your passion" — wise advice or survivorship bias?
  5. Why do essential workers earn less than entertainers? Can that be fixed?
  6. Is ambition a virtue, a trap, or a class privilege?
  7. Four-day week experiments keep succeeding — why hasn't everything changed?
  8. What does a post-work society do with its Mondays?

Teaching tips

  • Role-play gold: job interviews, salary negotiations, resignation conversations.
  • For business classes, swap warmups for "describe your company in five sentences."
  • Vocabulary seeds: deadline, promotion, colleague, workload, burnout, freelance, shift.

Practise these with a real teacher.

One-on-one conversation lessons, A1 to C2 — friendly, structured, and personal.

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