How To Answer ‘What Do You Do’ In English (With Examples)

Hey guys, it’s Shane from English Understood here and this is part two of the ‘What would you say if … ‘ series.

What would you say if I said to you ‘What do you do?’ What do you do?

This is how a native speaker would say ‘What do you do?’ What do you do? He would say ‘Woddayuhdo?’

Let’s first talk about what this sentence means: ‘What do you do?’

What tense is it? It’s a present simple tense so we know it could be asking about a habit or a routine.

‘What do you do’ normally means ‘How do you spend your time every day?’

For example, do you work? Do you study? Do you do something else?

So some possible answers to this question could be ‘I’m a teacher. I teach English to adults.’

Or ‘I’m working in a bank at the moment but I want to change jobs soon.’

Or ‘At the moment, I’m working part time as a teacher and studying part time at university.’

So these are just some of the common ways that we could use to answer this question.

But just remember, does ‘What do you do’ mean ‘What are you doing right now’? No it doesn’t.

It’s talking about what do you do every day.

What do you spend your time doing every day? Do you work? Do you study or maybe do you do something else?