Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles Vanessa: Hi. I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com. Let's talk about describing people. Today, I'm going to help you learn 82 expressions for describing people. There are three different ways to describe people. One of them is to describe their appearance. I have brown hair. The second way is to describe their personality or character. I'm optimistic. The third way is to describe their actions or hobbies. I'm a teacher. I like cats. Today, we're going to specifically focus on how to describe someone's or maybe your personality and character. Have you ever taken a personality test? These kind of tests try to tell you something new about your character or maybe put you into a category. You are a comforter. You are enthusiastic. You are a pessimist. Personally, I hate almost every personality test. Why do I need a test to tell me about my personality? I already know my personality. You probably learned a lot about me just from that statement. I don't need a test. I don't need someone else to tell me about my personality. Having said that, sometimes personality tests can be really helpful for expanding your vocabulary so that you can accurately describe people. Maybe you just got a new job and you want to tell your husband about your boss. You want to explain your boss' character or maybe how your boss looks or some things that your boss does or maybe you're on a first date with someone and you want to tell them the wonderful things about your personality. You need to describe yourself. In this lesson, I'm going to give you the vocabulary to accurately describe other people and also yourself. Today, I want to ask you six questions to learn more about your personality. The goal is to choose some of these nouns and adjectives and create a sentence or maybe a couple of sentences describing yourself. If you feel like this is too personal, you can kind of create a list for someone else in your life. At the end of this lesson, I have some extra special material. You're going to see a conversation with five native English speakers where we try to describe each other. Hopefully, this will help to also expand your vocabulary, but you'll have to wait until the end of this lesson. All right. Let's get started with the first question on this personality test. Personality test question number one. Are your travel plans generally organized? What about your home and office? Are they pretty tidy? Tidy means clean. Things are orderly. Think about this for a moment. Organized. Tidy. Does this describe you? Think about this for three seconds. Choose yes or no. Three, two, one. Let's say you decided to say yes. My travel plans are generally organized. My home and office are pretty tidy. Some great adjectives we can use to describe you. I'm organized. I'm put together. I have it together. Here, we're talking about you're life. You have your life together. It is organized. I'm organized. I'm put together. I have it together. Or you might say I'm A Type. A Type is compared to B Type, which we'll talk about in just a moment. A Type means that you are quite orderly. There is a place for everything in your life. You might also a qualifier to some of these expressions. I'm so somewhat A Type. I'm kind of A Type. I'm pretty A Type. Here, we're lessening it a little bit. You're not 100% A Type. You're not 100% organized. I'm somewhat organized. Okay. That's fine. Most of us are kind of in the middle of a lot of these categories, so it's good to use these qualifiers. I'm somewhat organized. You might also say if you said yes to this that your travel plans are generally organized, you might say I'm a doer. Doer. Here the root word is do. You do things. You don't just think about them and wait for something to happen. You do things. You take action. I'm a doer. Or you might say simply I'm clean. Things in my life are clean. I'm a clean person. If you said no to this, no, my travel plans are not orderly. My home and office, they are a wreck. Well, what are some adjectives we can use to describe you? You might be spontaneous or creative. What if you are not A Type, you are B Type? B Type means that you don't always have things orderly. Maybe you tend to be slower at doing things. You think about things a lot. Usually, B Type people might be a little more of the creative, spontaneous type. That's why you're in this list. Then, we have some negative words that we can use to describe these people as well. You might be scatterbrained. Here, we can imagine in your head things are not orderly. They are scattered. Scattered means unorganized. If you say to someone you are scatterbrained, it is not nice. You could say it about yourself. That's fine. I'm scatterbrained. But, you don't want to say that about someone else. During today's lesson for these words that are definitely rude to say to someone else, I put a little star beside it so that you know I should probably be careful saying this to other people because these are always negative. The final thing you might say if you said no to this question is I'm not clean. I'm messy. My life is messy. My house is messy. Just things are not organized. I'm messy. Did you write down some words that relate to your personality? All right. Let's go on to the personality test question number two. Question number two. Is it easy to stay relaxed even when you have pressure? Do small events not change how you feel about the rest of the day? Maybe a small negative thing happens and how cares. It doesn't bother you. You can just easily forget about it. Think about these questions. Is it true for you? Yes, I can easily stay relaxed even when there's pressure. Yes, I can easily forget about little annoyances during the day. Or no, it's hard for me to feel relaxed even when there's pressure. Think about this for you and let's talk about some words in three, two, one. What if you said yes to this? It's easy for me to feel relaxed even when there's pressure. Yeah. If there's small annoying things that happen during the day, it doesn't bother me. What are some words we can use to describe you? You could say I'm easygoing. Nothing phases me. I'm optimistic. I'm even-keeled. We talked about this word in a previous lesson where Dan and I talked about our relationship, our marriage together. He said that I'm even-keeled. This is a great word. You might say I'm confident. I'm calm. I'm rational. These are all things that you might use to describe you if you said yeah, I can easily stay relaxed even when there's pressure. What about if you said no to this question? What if you said no, I don't easily feel relaxed. I'm often not relaxed. I'm often stressed. What are some words we can use to describe you? We might say I'm sensitive. This means that things affect you easily. It's not always a negative thing. Of course, it depends no the situation. If you're applying for a high stress job, you don't want to say I'm sensitive. It probably means you're not a good fit for the position, but this could be just to describe