1. Maria Loredo 2 batD 2008/09 Internet materials. Virtual Classroom Task 2
Unusual jobs
This activity is meant to complement the starting unit from your book. It deals with jobs and,
hopefully, will help you build up your vocabulary and approach the topic with a bit of humour. It is
based on real people and on real life experiences.
 What’s the most unusual job you can think of?
 Can you figure out the type of skills involved in the 5 jobs in the box below?
chicken sexer, sniffer, sock turner, cannonball, perfusionist
These examples are all real and were taken from a BBC site were people write about their working
experiences. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/4169490.stm
I’ve chosen some examples for you to read. Find out whether your guesses were correct.
1 Diego Zeman is fired twice a day. Boom boom. Shot from a four
metre gun, the circus stunt man flies through the air at speeds of up to
60mph, his mind always firmly set on that distant safety net. The crowds
roar, wide-eyed children clamour for his autograph and the hours aren't bad.
But it's not an easy life. "I always feel nervous," he says. "I have to concentrate, everything has to
be 110% perfect." Get the timings wrong and it's not just your job at risk.
2. As a student I worked one vacation as a chicken-sexer. We had to look at all these day-old
chicks and work out which were hens and which were cockerels. Ever since, I can't eat chicken!
Roger Price, Reading, UK
3. I knew a lad who, while at uni, volunteered for an experiment in which he had to
wear a t-shirt for a length of time (I forget how long, I think it was days) to see what effect
his "natural odour" and pheromones would have on a group of equally specially selected
girls who had to sniff his t-shirt. I did not volunteer to be a "sniffer".
Corran, Newcastle, UK
4 . I worked for a number of summers while at school and
university as a sock turner in a local factory. Socks come off the
knitting machine the right way out and have to be turned inside out
so the toes can be sewn up. So yes, my job was to turn tubes of wool
inside out. Paid piecework by the dozen pairs. Terrible job but better
than the ladies who had to sort the sewn up socks into pairs.
Vikki, Leeds
5. I am a Clinical Perfusionist. It is my job to operate a heart-lung machine which
replaces the function of the patient native heart and lungs during heart surgery in
children and adults There are around 300 accredited Clinical Perfusion Scientists in
the UK. Most people think that I am a miss-spelt Percussionist, or something to do
with testing perfume, and sometimes (usually dead beat tired at 3 am with a very sick
patient and an irritable surgeon), I wish I was.
Nigel Slade, Perth, WA
Task Visit the BBC site http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/4169490.stm and
find one or two examples you worth sharing with the rest of the class. You can cut and paste the
testimony of your choice into your virtual folder documents but you must memorise the
vocabulary you need to be able to tell your classmates about it without reading.
Write down the new words that you learnt doing this activity.
Rate the activity. Did you enjoy it? Did you learn anything? Did it interest you?
(5 very good; 4 good; 3 OK; 2 boring; 1useless)