Advanced English Vocabulary | Adjectives to Describe Experience

Hey, it's Annemarie with Speak Confident English,

and in a recent lesson of mine,

I highlighted how to use the present perfect tense to talk about your life

experience in English. But what about common word combinations,

specifically collocation, such as valuable experience, vast experience,

and hands-on experience?

Choosing the right vocabulary is just as important as using

accurate grammar structures. In fact,

common collocations can contribute to overall accuracy in speaking

and help you with increased clarity as well.

In this Confident English lesson today,

you'll learn 17 common complications to help you talk about your life

experiences in English,

whether you're focused on general knowledge and skills you've acquired over

time or an unforgettable life event.

Everything you learn in this lesson is ideal for job interviews in English or

simply telling some of your favorite stories about your life overall.

But first, if you don't already know,

I'm Annemarie with Speak Confident English.

Everything I do here is designed to help you get the confidence you want for

your life and work in English. So while you're here,

if you find this lesson helpful to you,

make sure to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel on YouTube so you

never miss one of my Confident English lessons. Now,

if you're new to my lessons,

you might be wondering what I mean by the word collocation.

This is a word I use often in my vocabulary focus lessons.

So let's do a quick recap.

A collocation is a combination of two or more words native

speakers use together frequently. For example,

hands-on experience, vast experience, valuable experience.

When learning collocation,

it's best to think about them as a single unit of meaning rather

than individual words.

If you want to learn more about cations in general,

I recommend one of my previous lessons titled 19

Collocations with the Word Think.

I'll leave a link to that just below the video.

Now to help you with this particular lesson today,

I've focused on three broad categories.

These include collocation to talk about knowledge and skill you've acquired

through your experience,

discuss insights based on reflections you've had from your experience

and category three collocation to describe meaningful events or

activities from your life experience.

So let's start with that first group - collocations we

use to talk about knowledge or skills you've acquired over time.

This category is particularly useful anytime you have a job interview

in English. Our first collocation is considerable experience

and just like I do with all my vocabulary focus lessons,

I'll give you a definition and an example sentence so you know how to use

this collocation in context.

Considerable experience is used to say that you have a lot of

or many years of experience in a particular area. For example,

Jenna has considerable experience in teaching English to young

children. In a job interview, of course, you could say,

I have many years of experience, or I have a lot of experience,

or more precisely you could use considerable experience.

Our second collocation in this category is valuable experience,

which we use to highlight experience that is particularly rewarding

or beneficial in some way. For example,

working at this nonprofit organization has provided me with valuable

experience for my career.

Next on our list is firsthand experience,

and what this means is that you've gained experience in a particular area

based on direct involvement or direct observation.

It's not something you simply read about or studied at university.

For example, during my studies abroad,

I was lucky enough to gain firsthand experience with a local culture.

Similar to firsthand experience is hands-on experience,

and again, this means direct or practical experience with something.

For example,

I have 10 years of hands-on experience in treating patients with sleep apnea.

The next two on our list are quite similar,

previous experience and past experience.

Let's talk about what distinguishes these two complications.

When someone talks about their previous experience,

they're highlighting or emphasizing applicable,

relevant experience they gained in a previous role or within a specific

period of time. For example,

based on my previous experience as a team leader,

I was able to easily delegate tasks during my first week as a new project

manager. In that example,

the experience as a team leader is relevant or applicable to the

new experience of being a project manager. Now,

when someone talks about their past experience,

it focuses on a much broader range of personal and professional experiences

over time. For example,

my past experiences with this salon have been fantastic.

They always know exactly what I need.

Number seven on our list for this category is vast experience.

If someone has vast experience in something,

their knowledge or skill is wide ranging and in depth.

For example,

Kelly has vast experience building websites using Python.

In other words,

she's extremely knowledgeable and skilled in that particular area.

A few moments ago I highlighted the use of previous experience being

experience that is relevant and that is another collocation we can use

relevant experience.

What this means is you have prior experience with something and it relates

to the present moment.

This is very often used when talking about previous job

experience and how it relates to a new opportunity you have now.

For example,

do you have any relevant experience in creating ads that target

generation Z?

Now that you have eight collocations to talk about the overall experience you

have with your knowledge and skills,

let's move on to insights you might gain as you reflect on your

life experience.

The first one in this category is to draw on one's life experience.

This means to use past knowledge or past lessons

learned to help you solve a current problem or task. For example,

when faced with a difficult problem,

I have drawn on my experience of past challenges to help me

find a solution. Similar to that,

collocation is to learn from one's experiences,

and of course this means to gain some knowledge or insight by

taking the time to reflect on things you've experienced in the past.

Here's an example, and this one is true.

I have the tendency to put things in the oven like bread or cake

and forget about them. As a result, I burn a lot of things in the oven,

so I've learned from experience to keep a constant eye on anything in

the oven.

Our third one in this category is based on experience.

This means to use knowledge or insight you've gained from past experiences

to help you make decisions or make judgments about something in the current

moment.

We often use this to give our opinions on a variety of topics or

to give a recommendation. For example, based on my experience,

it's better to travel to Iceland in the fall. Similar to that,

we can also use from from experience,

for example, from experience,

I can confidently say that preparing consistently helps me

perform better on exams. In a moment,

I have a few questions I want to ask you so that you have the opportunity to

use some of the complications you've learned here today. In example,

sentences of your own that will help you not just learn these new collations,

but remember them so that you can incorporate them into your English

conversations. But before we do that,

I have one more category I want to go over.

I want to review cations we can use to talk about meaningful life

events or activities. And the first one is shared.

Shared experience.

This is used to describe an experience that two or more people

go through together. For example,

going on a two week camping trip with our dearest friends was a

challenging shared experience that brought us closer together.

The next one on our list is unforgettable experience,

and just like you might imagine,

this is used to describe an experience that you can't forget about.

It was remarkable and very memorable in some way.

For example,

I had the most unforgettable experience at the concert last night.

The next one is one of my favorites from this list of collocation today,

a nerve-wracking experience.

I think this one may perfectly describe how some of my students feel when they

have to give a presentation in English the very first time.

A nerve-wracking experience is one that creates a lot of anxiety,

stress, or discomfort. For example,

giving a speech in front of everyone at work in English,

the very first time was a nerve-wracking experience.

The opposite of that might be an exhilarating experience.

This is an experience that is absolutely thrilling or exciting.

For example,

riding a rollercoaster for the very first time was an exhilarating experience,

and now the last one for this category is a liberating experience.

Something that liberates you, frees you, releases you,

or empowers you in some way. It removes limits from you.

For example, for me,

traveling solo to Taiwan was a liberating experience.

I learned so much about myself.

Now that you have these 17 collocation to help you talk about your

life experiences in English, I have three practice questions for you.

I want you to choose some of the complications you've learned here to answer

them and you can share your answers with me in the comments below.

Question number one is what topic or skill could you

give a 15 minute presentation on based on your experience?

In your answer to that,

I want you to talk about the amount of experience you have in that area,

so you might consider some of the collocation such as vast experience,

hands-on or firsthand experience.

My second question is what past experiences have shaped your

perspective on work-life balance?

Here we're talking about insights you've gained on that

particular topic, and question number three,

what is the most memorable experience from your childhood? Of course,

here we're focused on activities or events that are particularly meaningful.

Thank you so much for watching this video today.

Thank you for subscribing and liking this channel.

It really means a lot to me and I look forward to seeing you in my next

Confident English lesson.