Business English - Talking about your Responsibilities

Hi, my name is Rebecca and in today's lesson we're going to talk about how you can describe

your work activities, ok?

And we're going to focus on one particular word, responsible.

But the question is, what are you going to talk about, how are you going to use it, alright?

Just one second, ok.

So the point is, you can be answering two possible questions, or you can be talking

about two possible scenarios, who you are responsible to and what you are responsible

for.

And according to that, you will choose a different preposition, to or for, alright?

Let me give you an example so you understand what I mean.

If someone asks you, who are you responsible to?

They are asking you, who is your manager, who is your boss?

So then you would say, I'm responsible to John Miller, for example.

Let's suppose, in this example, that you are a marketing assistant, you're in the marketing

department, you're a marketing assistant and you have a manager whose name is John Miller.

He's the marketing manager.

So you say, I'm responsible to John Miller.

Then they ask you, what are you responsible for?

Now they're talking about the area that you are responsible for.

So you say, I'm responsible for the European market, ok?

I'm responsible to John Miller, I'm responsible for the European market.

Small difference, but it makes quite a lot of difference when you're actually explaining

it.

Let's take another example, now let's say you work in the human resources department.

Human resources is also called HR for short.

It's also sometimes known as the personnel department, not personal, but personnel department.

But here we've written HR.

So let's say you are an HR assistant and your manager, your boss, is the HR director.

So you would say, I am responsible to Mary Turner, who is the HR director.

I am responsible for recruitment and training, ok?

This is a small example, it's a little lesson, but I think it will help you to express more

clearly what you do at work in correct English.

If you'd like to do a little bit of practice with this, please visit our website at www.engvid.com.

You will find there some free quizzes after each lesson to help reinforce whatever you

have learned here.

Ok?

Thanks very much.

Good luck with your English.

Bye for now.