Life at BBC Learning English
Hello everyone!
Good to talk to you again! I had a brief stint as a teacher blogger last year as some of our regular readers might recall.
I thought you might like to hear a little bit about daily life here at BBC Learning English.
Our office is located right in the middle of London, very near the River Thames and not far from the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben and the London Eye. We're also quite near Fleet Street (where most British newspapers used to be based) and the Royal Courts of Justice (also known as the High Court).
It's a great location in a lot of ways, but it does mean that parking is very difficult, so most of us come to work by public transport - train, bus, or tube - and quite a few people come to work by bike. Cycling in Central London is not for the faint-hearted - but I take my hat off to Nuala, Callum and Paul who all cycle to work regularly. They all wear special clothes for cycling - high visibility jackets, shorts, and head protection, and warm, wind-proof jackets and gloves. So the mornings in our office sometimes look like a training camp for the Tour de France!!!
Here's a picture of Callum and Nuala in their cycling gear. The 'shiny hearts' they both appear to have are the special light reflectors on their jackets - which are glowing because of the camera flash. I don't know why they are located over their hearts...?
Luckily we have showers and lockers in our building so at some point in the morning, the cyclists nip off for a quick wash and brush up so by lunchtime everybody is looking normal (!) again. We don't have a dress code in our office and most of us wear casual clothes, except for Andrew, the head of BBC Learning English, who always looks very smart in his suit.
Here's a photo of Andrew at his desk. He's looking fairly relaxed without a jacket and tie... 
We have an open-plan office so we can all see and talk to each other. It gets quite noisy at times... and at other times it is so quiet that you could hear a pin drop. Everybody has regular tasks to do - for example, Nuala and Elena are busy with the new episode of Flatmates every Tuesday, and Carrie checks the blog comments most mornings - but most of us get to work on new projects fairly reguarly too. Sometimes we work alone but a lot of what we do is collaborative: for example, Callum worked with an expert from the BBC pronunciation unit when he was developing the new pronunciation series, and I was lucky enough to work with the lovely William when we were developing Grammar Challenge.
We have a lot of technical equipment in our office - cameras, recording equipment (including 2 very small studios) and various laptops, PCs and a lovely new Mac. Matt is our studio manager and he looks after most of the equipment - so if we need to set up any recording equipment, we ask him in advance and he makes sure we have everything we need. He's very friendly and co-operative and very patient and helpful with those of us who need technical support. He has to be very organised to make sure everything is where it should be, and that all the cameras etc. have the right cables, batteries etc.!!!
This is a photo of Matt and his very well organised equipment cupboard:
So I have probably given you the impression that our office is full of cyclists and cables. It's not quite like that! It's a great place to work and people are very friendly and relaxed (we do get a lot of work done, too). I'll tell you a bit more about some of the things we get up to the next time I write.
In the meantime, do write in and let us know a bit about your own working environment! You can pinch some of the vocabulary from this blog if you like - I won't mind!!!
All the best
Catherine
Vocabulary
I had a brief stint - I did a duty, task or job for a short time
not for the faint-hearted - difficult, tiring or dangerous
I take my hat off to (someone) – I have a lot of respect and admiration for someone
nip off – quickly go somewhere
to have a quick wash and brush up - to quickly wash your face, brush your hair, change your clothes etc. so that you look and feel clean and tidy.
a dress code – rules about what clothes people should wear in a particular situation or event
so quiet that you could hear a pin drop – this is a fixed expression that means 'very, very quiet'
collaborative – is the adjective form of collaborate: to work co-operatively with somebody
get up to - an informal way of saying 'do' - especially when the thing that you do is unusual, exciting or interesting
pinch – steal (informal)
Comments
Hi Catherine, i am a new blogger, my name is Simone and i come from Italy. It has been fantastic the "special tour" in your office, it seems a very great place to work and people seem very friendly. I have to apologyse for my english,i have been studing it just for 1 year so i still have lots of problems...I hope you'll understand me. Catherine your english is easy and is not diffuclt understand what you write, please keep blogging!!! Simone
Hello Carrie!! My name is Franklin, and this is the first time I leave a comment on the blog. I'm an intermediate English student who is quite new here, and I'm Amazed with your brilliant, simple way of writing because it makes me feel comfortable when going through the lines. Once I tried to realize how things worked there at the BBC Learning English office, and I was really impressed in knowing that it is almost like I have imagined;a nice place to work. I reckon that the layout at BBC Learning English must be really attractive with no walls between people what let them have a more informal environment, although it can sometimes, be slightly noisy with everybody talking at the same time.:) I'm going to stop by here, but I'd like you to make sure I will come back again to read your excellent articles. They are Great!! All the best, Franklin
Good evening! Thanks to you and all of you. I'm enganged to this blog since last wednesday,I think.It is very healthy and this help me to loose weight by the way.I surf here at 9.00 more or less,at this time we have dinner in spain but I go out from the kitchen and sit in my computer to share something very special. I use to ride a bike too,here.You can go everywhere and the weather almost always is friendly and kind with us.We have a line for bikes but is short and sometimes you have to share road with cars. Congratulations to the whole team for your task!! read you soon.
Hello Catherine! It´s so nice to hear from you again :-). Besides that, it was delightful to know how is your work environment. Oh, I´ve enjoyed seeing the pictures of Callun and Nuala( where´s Paul?) with their special clothes for cycling on, Matt and all that cables( Gosh! Matt must work hard to keep organised his cupboard) and I´ve enjoyed also seeing Andrew sat very confortable at his very neat desk. Anyway, now it´s my turn to talk a bit about my work environment. I work at a galvanization company near my home. Therefore, I don´t have to commute everyday to get there. The majority of my collegues go to work by car, whereas hardly any go to work by bus. Quite a few of them go to work cycling. In addition to this, there are a few number of people who just like me go to work walking :-). Once the company deals with chemical products, our dress code is the uniform and the protection materials. Moreover, my work environment it´s very noisy. So I could never hear a pin drop. We all hustle and blustle during our nine hours of working. All the things we do is collaborative, then all the tasks are connected. I reckon my work environment isn´t as friendly as yours Catherine. People there are always very stressed out, which sometimes create conflicts, but in the end everything goes well( thanks God!) :-). Well Catherine, I´m looking forward to reading your next blog. Meanwhile, have a wonderful weekend :-). Good bye, Ana Paula.
Hello Catherine and BBC team, It's good to hear from you. I'm always curious about who is behind these pages and what he/she gets up to. At the beggining, I used to imagine you all looking like teacher Stephen, then realised there were women too...you, Nuala, Jackie, then I saw Callum, Neil, Paul, William,Dima...until I've given up on building an unique image of British people in my mind. One thing I'm sure is that you all have shiny hearts. I take my hat off to you. In my working place few people go by bike. We use car and bus a lot. We also don't have a dress code except for the white clothes. We have a room with lockers to get dressed there. It isn't an open-plan office but we can enter any room,talk and see each other anytime. We are mostly collaborative women after all, what means that it isn't so quiet that you could hear a pin drop. Most of the time we are busy like a bee but there are times that we are more relaxed and even make jokes and play tricks on each other like splashing developing or fixing solution in the white clothes (you don't know how is difficult to remove the stain!) The only problem is to see the workmates that work in another schedule. For example,while we are leaving, the team that works in the afternoon arrives and we have the opportunity to say few words but we rarely see the team that works at night except when we change our schedule and have a brief stint replacing someone or when we organize a meeting to see everybody. The view from the windows is relaxing. From my window I see the sky, houses below, buildings (not so close), many trees and the main catholic church of my city apart from the "Convento da Penha" that we can see from another window in our building. I like stretching while listening a good music and seeing the view when I arrive there. I don't have troubles at parking because we arrive very early while many drivers of my city are still dreaming or having breakfast but one who doesn't work in the morning would oppose my words. Zillions of people nip off for school or work so that the traffic gets crazy about 7 to 8 am and it's not for the faint-hearted indeed. Isn't it fairly similar to your working environment? Oh! There's still one expression to pinch that is to have a quick wash and brush up but it' too late now and I'm tired. I have to say ggod bye to the shiny hearts. Good night Adriana
Catherine I also take my hat off to Callum and Nuala! It was good to hear about your work location. I am wondering, what is the street name you are stationed at? Once again it was proved that pictures say so much more than words, thank you for sharing the photos with us. Andrew looked content, yes, and Matt´s cupboard was exactly in the same order as the closets I have seen with his colleagues have here in Finland. Open-plan office sounds a bit too much for me, I like peace and quiet for concentration, and I am lucky to have my own office. I do keep the door ajar almost at all times, but it is good to know that I am able to close it, if I need to. We do not have a dress code at our work place, but I do try to dress in such a manner that I am able to go and do any task that I may come across. Collaborative… our work is done also with team efforts, so although we work independently a lot, tasks are often part of a bigger partnership. All the best…
Hello Catherine, I enjoyed reading this post.I used to read The teacher blogger regularly.Because I had a busy year I neglected the blog.Anyway, you gave us a very vivid account of BBC staff.Thanks!
Hi Catherine, thank you for the tour around your Office. It's always good to have an impression of the people we only meet by names. Liked the relaxed and collaborative mood of your working place. I can say that I am also very fortunate in this regard, because I also work in a friendly atomsphere. The problem is that we always have some colleagues who work on Fast track contracts. This is some time worrying, you get used to some and they leave so soon or you are concerned who is going to join you after that... But all in all I enjoy my job a lot and I consider myself very lucky owning it.
No doubt, the blogs and everything on BBCLEARNING ENGLISH are so intersting. The people, working in it are so pleasant and efficient. GOOD LUCK to all...Maryam
Hi Catherine! Nice to meet you. I like life at BBC Learning English. It looks as if everyone is happy working in such a relaxed and friendly atmosphere; especially Callum and Nuala in their cycling gear. I also work in an office which is very well located. I live 10 blocks from it but I'm too lazy in the mornings so I take the bus. I'm an accountant and work with 2 colleagues and an university student who helps us a lot. We don't have a dress code in our office too so we wear casual clothes and on Fridays I put on my trainers because I go to the gym after office. Everyone has different working hours. My schedule is from 9 to 16. How long can a day at BBC Learning English be? Bye for now. See you.
Hi Catherine, Nice to read your blog, it's a awesome entry to bring readers closer to BBC LE. It's a wonderful idea to tell us about life at BBC LE. See you soon, best regards. James.
Hello Catherine,it's really nice hearing from you. It seems like life at BBC LE is a real team work and it was also interesting knowing how the staff members commute to work. Best wishes, Naheed
Hello Catherine, I live in Istanbul, between Europe and Asia. My office and my home are located west in the Europe part of Istanbul but there are 40 kilometres between them. Istanbul is very big and crowd city. Traffic is terrible in working hours, morning and afternoon whereupon motorcyclers are increase in Istanbul day after day. I take my hat off to them because motorcycling in Istanbul is for the faint-hearted. Luckily we have shuttles between company and our houses while becoming company employees. We have a dress code in our office but the rules not hard and fast. We have an separated-plan office and all of us are working with PCs so sometimes it is so quiet that you could hear a pin drop. Thats good for me because I prefer silence. Thank you for your advice about BBC LE office life and I am looking forward to reading your next. Best wishes. Nilufer
dear Catherine .what a nice blog you have given us . I have been your reader for more than two years . In my mind ,I've regarded all of you as my friends . today ,I finally know how my friends work and live .I'm so happy .
Hi Catherine! Basically the Italian dress codes are: men workers are not supposed to wear singlets and Bermuda shorts or baggy trousers and no clogs or flip-flops in the summer. As for the women, no tank tops and mini-skirts. About the piercings or tattoos, it depends on your work position. If you deal with people everyday and your piercing is little there is not problem, but there are some companies that may ask you to take it off. Mind you, it is not a written code and everything depends on the work environment and the kind of job you have. As far as I am concerned, the company where I did my internship last year had a written dress code for the workmen. No matter the season a worker was supposed to wear a uniform whereas the “white-collar “ workers ( that was my case) were exempted from it. I used to wear solid colour t-shirts, jeans and sneakers and I used to get to work by bus. Kudos to Callum and Nuala. They are very brave! Bye!!
Hi catherine!I read your Blog.It was Awesome with very easy english.I am very impressed kowning about work place.your work place is very nice and co-operative so.......plzzzzzzzzzzz tell us more about your work place in your next Blog.I will be very please to know more about work place. Bye!!!
Hi Catherine! It's really nice to read so much about your working place, very interesting place indeed. I am from Singapore, and I work in a biotech company. My job requires me to perform R & D experiments in scientific lab. So I have a working desk in a room with a computer, and another room next door which is the lab where I spend most of my working hours running experiments. I share my room with a colleague, but we can hardly hear a pin drop as we always turn the radio on - hey, some music does spice up the ambience~ Eventhough my other colleagues work in their respective rooms we do bump into each other quite often and I like going into their rooms for some chit-chat. :) As for dress code, we don't have a formal one. Because we are working in a lab environment we have to wear covered shoes, and it's therefore also not really practical to come to work in skirts. You won't like to imagine people working in a lab with high heels and skirts, haha. In Singapore, most people, especially youngsters who just started earning their own living a few years and could not afford a car (which is an expensive thing to own here), come to work by public transport. We have a lot of buses here, and a nice system of train (which is something like the tube in London, we call it MRT here, stands for Mass Rapit Transit). Rarely do people come to work by bike, being a tropical country it means Singapore is mostly hot all the time, if not with some sudden heavy tropical rain. So riding a bike to work early in the morning for such long distance (we normally don't have working places next to our homes) means perspiring a lot (or getting wet in heavy rains?!)! And we don't usually have shower bathrooms in Singapore companies. So for anyone who really rides to work in Singapore, I have to take my hat off to him/her! Nevertheless, reading your blog reminds me a lot of life in Europe where I had a brief stint working in a town in Austria - most people ride their bikes to work, so cool! I told my boyfriend (also an avid fan of BBC EL), who has just come back from London a week ago from a business trip, that the BBC EL office is near the Thames and the Parliament and the Big Ben (such pretty Ben!) and the Eye...he was excited to say, 'oh, that's really central London, very nice view!'...Well, I really long to step onto the soil of London! And so when is the time going to come? I want to see the Big Ben with my own eyes! OK, I guess I've written too much now, hope to see your new blog, tell us more on what you guys get up to!
Hello! Hi Catherine, I,m new your this site,This is my first time i write in english someone else,I virtual tour in your office and staff this is awesome.
Hello there, This is the first time I joined in and I am so glad to find that everybody here are so nice and friendly with each other. I have been working in a French company with a representative office in Beijing, China for 7 years. All the people working here are Chinese except one Italian girl. Though we do a lot of email communications with our worldwide offices and clients in English, but in daily life, we have not much chance to talk face to face with a native English speaker. We call our English as Chinglish, but we are trying our best to improve it. I believe you have heard the earthquake in Sichuan Province, China which has been the number 1 hot news(is it correct to say: topline?) on BBC for some days. I have kept watching our own TV news and internet news. Everybody in our office has donated to the people in Sichuan who are suffering the disaster. Some donated blood, and some donated money and goods. My 4 year old daughter has donated a bottle of water and some small changes I gave to her. I can not help bursting into tears seeing the small kids pulling out of the rubble, dead, and their parents crying besides them. You may know some of the schools are entirely destroyed by the quake and thousands of the primary school boys and girls are buried. As a mother, the most unbearable thing can not be harder than seeing this. I was trying to talk about something else today about our daily life in the office but the earthquake do distract me from that. Sorry for this. Next time I will stick to your topic.
My part-time job Hello everyone! I’m just a newcomer in BBC Learning English. I would like to say “Thanks” to all of you who’s devoted a lot of your energies and time to this great website. Now, I want to share with you guys something about my job and my workplace. After finishing university, I always expected a proper full-time job in order to utilize my IT knowledge and personal skills. However, it’s not that easy for me to have this little dream come true. I went to a few interviews but I was not offered any position. In this depressing time, I thought I should find something to do rather than just stay at home waiting for phone calls for job interviews. I tried to apply for a couple easy part-time positions. Luckily enough, I got one quickly. Therefore, I’m now working three days a week as a wholesales assistant for a small fashion business. The warehouse is located quite close to my apartment. Everyday I catch the 109 tram in front of my building and go directly to there. The commuting time is only 15 to 20 minutes. It’s so convenient that I’ve been always punctual even though I got up a bit late sometimes. As a wholesales assistant, I have to perform many daily tasks including taking orders, packing orders, handling client requests, dealing with the courier, and so on. Recently, I’m so happy to be assigned to maintain the website as I came from the IT background. I love the job and the people I work with. However, it’s just a part-time position and I can’t see any prospect. I’m now still hunting for a more professional full-time position in IT industry. Sometimes I feel so guilty as I never told the owner that as soon as I find a better job, I would leave her.
My girl seems to think that using Hello There! Or Hi there! is incorrect and the proper English to use when addressing someone such as a friend is: Hi Dear or hello dear, Hi their. Is the latter correct/incorrect? I would very much like to know, since its a learning for me as well as for her. I would like to share the answers with her. Anticipate your response. Thank u!
Hello, It must be really nice at BBC Learning English- somehow I imagined all of you in suits with a smart tie etc... As for my workplace- well, I'm a teacher and the teacher's room at the school is more or less normal. As you enter there are some shelves on the right, a big light brown desk in the middle (in fact this desk is quite big so that it narly fills the room)- each teacher has his or her own place and there are also 2 PCs and 4 laptops. During schoolyear everyone is very busy- my colleagues are coming and going and one can also see a few students here occasionally. Sometimes when we are preparing material for the classes it can be very silent at other times we are chatting, joking etc. Some of my colleagues come to work by car, others come by bike (at least when the weather is nice) and some others and myself come by tram. There is no dress code here either- we are smart only when there is something special like the opening of the schoolyear etc. I think this is all for now since I have a few things to do. See you, Csilla :)
Hello there! I´m surprised to see how good is your working place, you seems really confortable. I take my hat off for all of you from BBC Learning English cause you work hard to get up to us a good stuff. So, I work in a company of telemarketing, So, my co-workers and I are close from each other and we have a good realationship,of course we have some discuss, but I think that´s normal. I go to my job in a bus and a take 40 minutes to arrive there, it´s a long journey. All the best.
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