How to Answer “What Are Your Strengths and Weaknesses?"

all right ty everybody welcome back to our weekly live stream my name is Alisha and today we're going to talk about how to explain your strengths and weaknesses so strengths means your strong points weaknesses means you're not strong points your weak points so in this lesson I'm going to talk about expressions you can use for job and school interviews to talk about your skill sets and then at the end of the lesson I'm going to talk about casual expressions you can use just when you're talking with your friends or your family about the things that you're good at and not so good at so I hope that lots of people can find something interesting from today's lesson while we wait please make sure to send us a message in the chat so that we can say hello to you and please also like and share the video so that other people can find today's lesson a couple of points one first there's free stuff for you from the link below the video if you are watching on YouTube above the video if you're watching on Facebook if you're watching an Instagram please check YouTube or Facebook there is free stuff free vocabulary sheets to download you can choose whatever topic sounds interesting to you grab it study with it may be good for those of you who are at home right now a lot I hope that it's helpful that's announcement one announcement two again I really really want to emphasize you should send me your questions um this is a screenshot from our weekly Q&A series question and answer series called ask Alicia where you can send me your questions and I will maybe answer them I was filming some I filmed a new episode yesterday and will be filming more new episodes in the coming weeks so if you think of a question about grammar about vocabulary about culture whatever if you have a burning question and you just think it would be fun to talk about in the series please send it send it to me I really do read all of them you can find the link for this um at English class 101.com slash asked - Alicia if that's too long to remember please search our YouTube channel English class 101 for ask Alicia is the turquoise a light blue color background is the picture so please check this out send me your questions and I will read them and maybe answer them so that's that we have our Facebook and our YouTube loaded up today hi everybody on YouTube I see lots of people Miguel hi Carolina Khan hello I'm wolf fearless new rule son kid hi everybody and on Facebook a couple people there hi Boresha but and Pierre hi and Jorge and Russel pure hello sorry if I said your name wrong okay sorry but hi everybody thanks very much for joining us live again this week yeah some of you are saying you're writing from like locked down places I know there are many people who are maybe staying in their homes a lot right now kind of a strange situation so I hope that we can enjoy our time together today I'm going to share the lesson myself I'm going to share the lesson myself and then I'm going to get started we're going to begin today's lesson by talking about your strengths so strengths means your strong points the things that you're good at doing I'm going to talk about weaknesses in part two and then in part three we'll talk about just more casual expressions that you can use Oh yogi I have shared the video so I will be good all right so let's get started let's begin over here with part 1 for today send me your messages in the chat I will try to check live but sometimes there is a lot to check so I can't promise anything anyway let's get started strings first a very basic strength phrase again strengths is the stuff that you are good at doing so when you are in a job interview or a school interview it's common to talk about the things you are good at what did you study what are your skills what are the things that you know how to do very well so a very simple expression you can use to talk about a strength is I'm good at mound phrase I'm good at your preposition here should be at I'm good at noun phrase some examples I'm good at project plan so projects planning two words this is a noun phrase this is an activity so your noun phrase should be some like maybe activity or like a software perhaps I'm good at project planning or I'm good at social media marketing so what is your skill I'm good at that thing a note you might sometimes hear I'm good with something this is used in like to talk about maybes you might hear like software I suppose used with wit like I'm good with computers or something like that I'm good with software but we use this to talk about like groups of people or we use it to talk about like specific objects so I just said like I'm good with computers that means maybe like I have good technical skills or you might hear people say I'm good with kids that means I'm good working with kids so when you hear this I'm good with think about it like I'm good at dealing with that thing or I'm good at dealing with that kind of people I'm I'm good with customers is another example so you might hear people use with when they want to talk about a specific group of people or like a specific object that they have some skill with but when you're talking about your skills in most cases using at plus the noun phrase is going to be the best some examples are coming in ah Andrew said a lot I'm the same one-minute time so I'm good at cooking and I'm good at baking hi okay so other examples son kid says I'm good at learning math okay cool that's maybe a good one for your studies uh hi everybody on Facebook I see lots of people saying hello on Facebook please send me your example sentences on Facebook I will try to check them there so again this pattern you can use this to talk about your work or your studies if you're a student right now you can use this to talk about the things you're good at in your in your schoolwork so like I'm good at studying for tests I'm good at preparing for tests whatever that might be for you rendell on YouTube says I'm good at guitar nice okay I don't see anything else he says I'm good at eating yeah me too I am also good at eating but maybe don't say that in a job or a school interview yeah so let's kind of let's try to think of some like professional examples we can use someone else has said I'm good at sleeping that is maybe my greatest skill sleeping oh my gosh mom and dad if you're watching it you know that's true okay let's go to the next pattern which is I like and infinitive or Jared so many of you who have asked me questions about infinitives and gerunds so infinitive if you don't know infinitive this word infinitive refers to the two plus a verb so like to cook to eat to run to sleep that base form of the verb the basic form of the verb is called the infinitive form that's the infinitive form the gerund or a gerund is a verb with an ING at the end so it's verb plus ing but it's not the progressive form so like when we say I am sleeping or I am cooking or whatever that's the progressive form of the verb when we use the verb in the ing form as a noun a gerund is a verb used as a noun this is called a gerund so some examples of this I like planning trips I like planning trips planning here is like the gerund form I like planning trips so I've used this pattern infinitive or a gerund because many of you have asked like should I use the infinitive form should I use like the ing form here what should I use when you use the verb like you can choose either both are fine this question it depends on the verb that comes before your infinitive or your jaren with the verb like you can use either the two verb or verb ing form so I like planning trips or I like to plan trips both are perfect both are correct they have the same feeling meaning you can choose which you prefer another example I like working in a team I like working in a team so again I've used the gerund form I could say I like to work in a team also totally correct totally correct Kim says I like listening to music yes so again this pattern I have it here to introduce your strengths so some of you are talking about your hobbies yes you can use this pattern to talk about your hobbies that's correct but this my intention here my plan here is for you to talk about your strengths so what do you like to do at work what do you like to do at school think about this in the context like as if you were going to a job interview so what do you like to do at work I like working in a team or maybe I like working alone or I like editing video sometimes or I like teaching things live on the internet so whatever your work thing is you can express that with I like to talk about your working style that's my intention here everybody's sending me sentences about their hobbies so please send me sentences about your work preferences what are your work or your study preferences you guys are being very silly at which I can appreciate but I'm not seeing many many sentences about your work or your study styles Leah hey Leah way to be a team player Leah I like arranging files neatly yeah thanks Leah can you please talk about Corona so we can learn some expressions I'm thinking about it I'm thinking about planning a lesson for it I have it in my head yes other examples don't see any okay let's go to another example Byron has a nice one nice I like working under pressure good lovely says I like working very fast and well good okay nice one Miguel says I like making programs yeah okay good you guys have got it you guys have got it okay rubric examples okay let's go to this next one the next one is a past tense expression for your topic of study so if you have a university degree bachelor's degree master's degree if you have your PhD you can use this expression to talk about your specialty you are focused the thing that you spent a lot of time studying and have become good at doing so the verb here is I specialized so past tense specialized I specialized in is your preposition I specialized in someone wrote paleontology earlier I specialized in economics I specialized in Japanese language I specialized in topic of study so you can send me now the for those of you who have finished school past tense I specialized in your topic of study if you are in school now or if you are maybe high school student you can use the progressive test I am specializing in or you can just say I'm studying if you want to express something you are doing in university now you can say in university my focus is is I was very weird like way of delivering that in my university my focus is thing you're studying now or past tense was something something please however note my focus is or was on your preposition changes in this sentence my focus was on something something or I specialized in something something so please note that they are there are different prepositions used in these tenses so please be careful examples uh good examples are coming in hi on youtube I specialized in systems okay I specialized business get a specialized in agriculture okay I specialized in math education good I specialized in accounting maybe hmm I specialized in university okay so what what was your topic of study in university what was like your major the thing that you focused on I'm specializing in business law nice good examples on Facebook I specialize in public speaking says Sam very nice okay good I specialize in English language says hello cool I specialized in accounting nice ones Edwin says when should I use at university or in university when you want to talk about your location use at so like for example now I am at the University so you can talk about your physical location or you can talk about like past tense like when I was at my university I studied ba ba ba some people will use in to talk about their studies like in university I studied something something something so if you want to talk about your location or the experience in your university I've just used in use app to talk about that if you want to use an expression like when I was in university used in depending on like a I'm like British English or American English you might hear people use different prepositions there so I hope that that was helpful for you good lots of examples coming in now my gosh Raj says I specialized in nature photography whoo what's that Karim says I specialized in amphibian evolution whoa that sounds cool that sounds cool what's gonna happen to salamanders next Oh funny to me okay uh Mohammed on Facebook says I specialized in medical studying and medicine ah studying from the Arabic I specialized in medicine I specialized in medicine cool you have all studied very interesting things okay go let's move on into this last group so it's very common in interview situations to give and I recommend this to give examples to to support these ideas so if you say I'm good at social media marketing or I'm good at like working in a team or whatever give an example of that and this part is true for your cover letters and for your resumes if you don't know when you apply for a job it's common to in many cases submit a cut cover letter or a resume and it's like an introductory letter to introduce yourself so it's important to use these kind of like powerful verbs in your cover letters so don't try to make yourself sound small in your English cover letters you need to make yourself sound kind of big like this is what I achieved so when you talk about your strengths at work and you give examples of these things you can use expressions like I achieved so this is past tense of achieve or I launched so launched sounds like bigger than just I started or my team developed like some of you are programmers I know so like my team developed this new app that was very popular in the App Store something or I created or I built so these really like strong verbs are important these verbs are much better than just I made like I made it's like it's kind of a it's a less powerful word choice so choosing something like I created or I've built it's a little bit more powerful has some more punch so please keep this in mind okay that's part one let's take a break I don't see okay some of you are still sending your specialization questions I specialized in studying philosophy or just I specialized in philosophy is fine cool okay we'll take a quick break and then we'll go to part two I showed you a couple of these at the beginning of today's lesson if you want to download a few things - oh sorry you want to download a few things to help you work on your vocabulary you can check these out this is the business one I kind of designed today's lesson thinking about job interviews on the back of this business one hard to see I know right here at the top these are phrases for a business meeting but you can use some of these in interview settings like or you might rather hear some of these and interview settings like introductory questions let's start with or now I'd like to talk about so what's up so you can use this to study up on your business vocabulary there are lots of other topics too maybe these are a little bit tricky at the moment given the situation around the world but there are lots of different things you can talk this is a good one maybe to practice now these your time activities this one can be fun to review there are genre vocabulary words and other things on the back so take a look at these you can find many different topics check this out from the link below the video if you're watching on YouTube above the video if you're watching on Facebook if you're watching on Instagram please check YouTube or Facebook and I cannot see your comments let's continue to part do part 2 cool lots of people are joining thanks very much for joining us please make sure if you have not already to like and share the videos or other people can find our lesson this week Oh key Nokia let's go to part two weaknesses so now let's talk about expressing your weaknesses weaknesses that means your weak points those things that you are not good at doing it is very common and expected that you will talk about your weaknesses in job and sometimes school interview situations so how do you do that how do you tell someone what you're not good at doing like nobody wants to do that obviously so how do we do that first let's take a look at a couple patterns you can use but on the first one noun phrase is challenging for me noun phrase is challenging for me so something-something is challenging so challenging you could say is hard is difficult or whatever I like challenging because again it has kind of like a more professional sound to it if I just say like this thing is hard I think it sounds kind of like a complaint or that thing is difficult it also sounds like I'm not really working to improve it to me a challenging sounds a little bit more like I'm actually you know trying to work on this thing so for example noun phrases then time management is challenging for me this is true for me I'm always late on these live streams for example I always talk too much time management is challenging for me time management means managing your time like using the correct amount of time for things another example working by myself is challenging for me or maybe for some of you like working in a big group of people is challenging for me so you can talk about the kinds of things that are difficult for you but I think if you share it as a challenge it sounds like something that you're working to improve yeah Mahmood on YouTube says public speaking is challenging for me but I'm working on it nice example yeah public speaking public speaking if you don't know I mean speaking in front of a big group of people yeah like that's kind of a that's a huge one that's difficult for me too the only reason I can do this is because you're all not in front of me like making progress and teaching is challenging for me hmm do you teach interesting Hamza says writing is challenging for me Shalala says learning new languages is challenging for me okay nice good for your studies I think - so yes again you can use this for job or for school situations ok let's go to another pattern it's sometimes hard for me to verb phrase sometimes that's sorry that's very funny to me funny huge as well ok it's sometimes hard for me to verb phrase so hard for me to a big hint here is this - I talked about the infinitive form earlier yeah infinitive is do plus the verb so that means your verb here should just be the base form of the verb so don't worry about using ing or whatever here it's sometimes hard for me to prioritize tasks and sometimes hard for me to prioritize tasks in native speed prioritize means choose which thing I should do first to prioritize something so it's sometimes hard for me to choose which things I should do first another one it's sometimes hard for me to focus in noisy places so if you were working maybe you're studying in a very noisy environment it might be important to mention this so again I have written it's sometimes hard I've used hard here and but I've kind of softened it with sometimes it's sometimes hard for me to do this thing so you can choose one of these patterns to talk about something that is challenging for you example is Oscar says learning by myself is challenging for me good learning by myself is challenging for me other examples I don't see any on Facebook lots people saying hello and thank you on Facebook cool hello thank you okay then let's continue to as we talked about with your strengths with your good points when you describe your weaknesses it's important to share about how you're trying to fix them or how you're trying to like to improve yourself so if you say like time management is challenging for me you know this about yourself you should probably also share how you're working to improve it how do you deal with your weakness how do you handle your weakness so like time management is challenging for me because of this I communicate a lot with my teammates or I create and share project schedules publicly or I ask for feedback about my work so think of like the solution or something that helps you to deal with this weakness to deal with this like problem point that you have and don't say I'm perfect I have no weaknesses like that's actually not a good strategy everybody has a weakness so share your weakness and talk about how you deal with it so like for example we're actually working by myself is challenging for me because I like to have lots of different projects and so I kind of get like lost in what I should do first sometimes so I because of this I create and share project schedules publicly that's very true for me I will share about like my deadlines or I'll talk about it on like social media I use that to share my deadlines and keep myself accountable like when I'm going to put something out that's a strategy that works for me okay I don't like to make missed deadlines public deadlines for sure okay cool because of anger issues I started meditation and it helps very interesting ok good strategy oh you know five minutes left oh yeah okay cool so I hope that this is helpful for talking about your weaknesses the things that you are not good at doing okay I'll go on to a break and then we'll go to the last point then I'll share a couple more things I'm kind of trying to choose things that I hope might be helpful for you some topics that might be helpful for you for those of you who are stuck at home oh here's a good one emergency words this one could be a good one to review at this point in time for some of you this one is about parts of the body yeah there's parts of the body here and then there's a couple of other vocabulary words these are like natural disaster related emergencies everyday emergencies oh that's funny well it's not actually funny but just this is maybe interesting lead time this is one to consider maybe another one is this one this one is like around your city something you can use to practice vocabulary around your city places stuff to do and so on again there are many different topics so depending on where you are and what you would like to review you can download all of these for free from the link below the video on youtube or above the video on Facebook if you're watching on YouTube please check YouTube or Facebook if you're just joining today's topic is how to explain your strengths and weaknesses I've talked about part 1 and part 2 I'm going to finish with part 3 some other very casual expressions you can use outside of your job or interview situations do I live on YouTube or do I do a live on you do guess this is live on YouTube and on Facebook I think that's the question okay oh yeah if you haven't already please make sure if you like and share the video so other people can find the lesson as well okay let's go to these casual expressions I have chosen three things to finish today's topic with again these are for everyday life so this first one I'm going to introduce please do not use this in polite conversations this is a very casual but very common expression we use with our friends and some of us with like our family members and so on the expression is I suck at something something something I suck at something means I am very bad at something we can also use this verb to suck to refer to other things like that movies suck - I like that music sucks or whatever that expresses that something was very very bad so please do not use this so when you're talking about your weaknesses like if you say in a job interview like I suck at time management it sounds really really unprofessional but this word is very common in everyday conversations so please use this with your friends only so we use this I suck at noun phrase like an activity of some kind for example I suck at singing or I suck at travel planning whatever the thing is that you're very very bad at doing you can express that with this phrase so please be careful so again to suck at something means to be very bad at please keep in mind yes this verb means like to remove the air from something like a vacuum cleaner like it it sucks things into it this use is like it's slang use so again very casual rough word but very very commonly used good examples are coming and I suck at cooking's that someone I suck at paying attention good ok well not good but just good example sentence ok good so this is very very common you can use it to talk about things you're very bad okay let's be a little more positive than and talk about this expression I'm pretty good at noun phrase and other activity I'm pretty good at something I'm pretty good at cooking or I'm pretty good at skiing so this pretty means decently or somewhat a little bit but we don't say a little bit good we say I'm pretty good I'm pretty good this is different from very good if you say I'm very good it sounds like you're confident if you say I'm good at cooking it's kind of neutral if you say I'm pretty good at cooking it sounds a little softer like maybe you have some confidence but you don't need to be like the best you just you feel pretty good you feel a little confident about your skills Oh Kai says I'm pretty good at math excellent I'm not very good at math well I mean I am like you know but like I don't know I got to like quadratic equations in high school and then I don't think I really want beyond that very much like precalc precalculus yeah I didn't really explore it much anyway uh on to the next one I can't plus the infinitive verb form or or a verb phrase at all I can't infinitive verb or verb phrase at all for example I can't speak Chinese at all I can't speak Chinese at all or I can't play guitar at all so infinitive verb by this this part I mean you can use just a vert like I can't cook at all that's fine I can't sing at all just the verb alone is okay or you can make a phrase I can't speak Chinese at all I can't play guitar at all so you can use those this expression finishes it's maybe a little bit hard to see here this expression finishes with at all at all this is like an idiomatic expression which means totally not able to do something I can't do this thing at all means totally not able to do that thing so you can use this at the end of your expression to emphasize this is correct if you say I can't speak Chinese or I can't play guitar totally correct but at all gives emphasis to that statement Hamza says I can't speak French at all excellent Mahmud says I'm pretty good at solving JavaScript algorithms excellent Jorge says Alisha an Instagram oh yes indeed well okay that's common let's see I'm pretty good at eating but I can't cook at all oh if you if you learn how to cook that's a good skill I recommend learning to cook I like cooking I'm pretty good at cooking someone says on Facebook I'm pretty good at eating many of you were pretty good at eating of us are pretty good at eating durka says I'm pretty good at speaking nice nice like public speaking speaking in front of a group it's a good skill to have definitely uh Rob you'll says I can't talk in English at all you gotta practice yeah so don't just watch me you gotta practice at your computer too um Edwin could can at all be used in positive sentences we use it really in negative sentences we use it to talk about things we are not able to do we don't really use it in positive sentences ah I can't run for a long time at all tax tax reform okay interesting username other examples good I'm happy there are many positive and lots of positive examples I'm not good at painting this as someone okay I think you guys have it I think everybody has it very nice I'm late as usual because time management is challenging for me so I'll end there we'll finish there next week's topic is something so we'll be back next week I'll be back next week now 10:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time that is New York City time different uses of have has and had everybody asks me all the time forever about these questions so I'm going to do another lesson about this next week so please join us again next week Wednesday 10:00 p.m. New York City time Google your local time or just set a notification on Facebook or on YouTube so that you don't miss us so that will be a good grammar lesson you can review past lessons about this topic before the before the livestream if you want to be prepared and ready with your example sentences so please join us again next week for next week's topic please be safe please be well please take care and I hope that you check out all kinds of good stuff to do if you are stuck at home of course we would be very happy if you choose to study with us you have free stuff you can pick up from us from the link below the video or above the video or don't I showed you some of these otherwise take care enjoy your week as much as possible and enjoy your weekend and we will see you again soon

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Id: KkR7ZG9jR4Q

Length: 34min 41sec (2081 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 18 2020