Quiz playing is a wonderful way to increase your knowledge of English as a Second Language. Remember that all of our ESL quizzes have titles that are both friendly and technical at the same time… In the case of this quiz you might like to tell your friends about “On the Job” but no doubt your teachers will talk about the “English Professions quiz”! If you hear a technical term and you want to find a quiz about the subject then just look through the list of quiz titles until you find what you need.
Most of us need to work, to bring in money and earn a living: perhaps that's why you are learning English. There are lots of words to describe English professions, including the things we need, do and make. This quiz will help you look at some terms used in English professions.
It is worth noticing that quite a lot of English-language family names come from the jobs that people did in an earlier generation ('the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker' in one children's rhyme; 'tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor' in another). If you know of famous British people with names like this, it may help you remember them. (Margaret Thatcher was Britain's first woman Prime Minister towards the end of the 20th century; her husband's family name 'Thatcher' means 'someone who makes roofs for houses, using straw'. You may have seen ~ at least in pictures, or in film or on television ~ little country cottages, and other buildings, with roofs like this, which almost look more like hair!)
Other family names may come from where people live (like Street, Church, Lake, Rivers, Hill or Bridge), or some characteristic of the people (Armstrong, Whitehead, Smart), or from a name in an earlier generation (McDonald, O'Reilly, Prichard, Robertson). Maybe there are similar patterns in the names in your language, or in the phone-book at home. Once you know these things, you can make more connections in your mind, and your learning should be faster and richer.