In Part 1 of this series, we looked at how “adverb + adjective” phrases are a valuable type of Business English vocabulary. In particular, vocabulary that you can say in your meetings at work. If you have not read Part 1, please click here.
In this post, we will look at more examples of adverb + adjective word groups for a different situation at work: Human Resources job descriptions.
When your HR department posts a job opening online to attract candidates to your company, you have probably noticed the ad includes phrases such as ‘highly experienced’, ‘totally responsible’, and ‘actively involved’ to describe the duties of the position or the candidate they are looking for.
Those phrases are three examples of common “word pairs” in Business English vocabulary – they are multi-words where the two words go together so well that it is like they are married! Let us show you what we mean so you can improve your English at work.
Highly Experienced
First, let’s look at the multi-word ‘highly experienced’. Human Resources might use this adverb + adjective word pair to emphasize the amount of experience the company requires a candidate to have for a particular senior-level position.
The HR person who posts the job uses ‘highly’ to mean ‘a large amount’ in the same way that they could use ‘very’ – to show that the job is not for people with medium experience or nidnoi experience!
An example would be, “We are looking for a highly experienced sales manager to lead our large sales team.” Using ‘highly’ in this way – to mean ‘very’ – is common in many job ads.
What we mean by “word pairs that are married” is that you could say ‘highly experienced’ or ‘very experienced’ but you wouldn’t say ‘totally experienced’. That’s because totally & experienced just don’t pair up well in English. They don’t go together. Recognizing which words do go together and don’t go together is an easy way to improve your English speaking ability.
Totally Responsible
Totally and experienced may not go together, but ‘totally’ does pair up well with ‘responsible’ and is an extremely common phrase in Business English vocabulary.
In our job ad that’s looking for a highly experienced sales manager, we might also use ‘totally’ in front of ‘responsible’ to mean completely responsible or 100% responsible.
Using ‘totally’ in this way will tell the job applicant that they will be 100% responsible for certain aspects of the job. For example, in a job ad you might see the sentence, “As sales manager, you will be totally responsible for managing your sales staff” or “You will be totally responsible for generating 5 new customers per month.”
Actively Involved
Lastly, ‘actively involved’ is another common adverb + adjective word pair often used by HR people in job ads.
The adverb ‘actively’ emphasizes the adjective ‘involved’ to show the applicant for the job that they must directly participate in certain tasks.
For example, if the job ad states, “In this role you will be actively involved in sales campaigns” it means they must work on brainstorming, creating, implementing, and documenting results of sales campaigns. They must do the work, or at least be a part of that work. They cannot simply assign the work to their staff.
In this blog post we saw three more adverb + adjective multi-words and how Human Resources might use them in the job ads they post online. The next time you read a job ad you will likely see examples of these and other adverb + adjective combinations – hopefully this article helps you get familiar with this type of word pair to improve your English at work.
To learn more about how multi-words help Thai professionals like you to speak English better (พูดภาษาอังกฤษ) or how ECSC helps Human Resources departments improve their employees’ Business English skills, contact us today.
