EducationRelated Expressions

want to speak real english from your

first lesson

at englishclass101.com

hi everybody my name is alicia in this

lesson i’m going to talk about some

education related expressions i’ve

broken this lesson into two parts

i’m going to introduce some past tense

expressions you can use to talk about

education that’s finished

and some future tense and present tense

expressions you can use

to talk about your education plans and

continuing education

so let’s get started i want to begin

this lesson

with past tense expressions so these are

things you can use to explain your

education

education that has finished you’re done

it’s complete we use

this expression to talk about high

school

and college or university level

education that’s done

the pattern is i graduated from

high school or university or college

in a year so for example

i graduated from high school in 2000. i

graduated from

college in 2006 for example

so the difference between university and

college in general there’s not a

difference

in american english we tend to use

college a little bit more

but both are okay to use you might hear

british english speakers use

university a little bit more often than

college

so we only use these for high school and

for university level education

we do not use these or this pattern

rather

for education lower than high school so

please keep this in mind

here we’ll also see in past tense we’re

using

the verb graduate in past tense it’s

graduated graduated

don’t forget this from i graduated

from high school i graduated from

university

you can also instead of saying

university you can include the name of

your university so i graduated from

abc university in year or i graduated

from abc

college in year if you want to be very

specific

so this expresses the completion point

of your higher education usually

when you want to explain your studies

you can use a couple of these patterns

it depends on what you would like to

emphasize

we have these two expressions major

i’ve used it as a verb here to major in

something

and to minor in something let’s look at

this verb form first

to major in something is to make

something make a subject your main

focus of study your major focus of study

so this is like the number one thing

you’re studying at

university usually so we use major and

minor

to talk about your university studies we

don’t use these

in high school because generally in high

school education

we’re learning lots of just general

information and it’s not

so focused we don’t choose something

necessarily in high school

so we use these to talk about our major

and our minor

studies so in u.s universities we

commonly have the ability to choose a

major as

i explained your main focus of study and

your minor so your minor is like your

secondary focus of study

so maybe you want to have like a sub

specialization

another small specialization so you have

a main specialization a main focus

and then this other kind of smaller

focus

so as i’ve said we can use these as

verbs or as nouns i’ve used major as a

verb here i

majored in subject is the pattern we use

with a verb here if you want to use it

as a noun

we’ll use it with the verb is in this

case past tense my minor

was subject so we could change these to

use either form for example

my major was subject i minored in

subject so either pattern is fine they

mean the same

thing when i say subject here it’s

usually like a broad

topic so for example i majored in

english i majored

in chemistry my minor was business

communication

so it’s usually something that’s kind of

a big topic that’s easy for lots of

people to quickly understand

then if you want to talk about your

degree

specifically the degree that you

received when you graduated or when you

finished your coursework

you can use one of these expressions so

we’re using this have to mean this is

something a degree that you

currently own you currently possess this

thing

so after four years of study in most u.s

universities

in a lot of universities around the

world actually

we receive a bachelor’s degree so that’s

commonly

um called like a ba for like bachelor of

arts or

bs bachelor of science so i have a

bachelor’s degree in subject

i’ve got degree in parentheses here

because sometimes people

choose to drop the word degree because

we understand this word bachelors

degree i have a bachelor’s in i don’t

know

english language for example so i have a

bachelor’s in

mathematics i have a bachelor’s in

engineering whatever your subject is

the next level here is masters masters

masters is part of graduate school

programs

so after you complete a bachelor’s

degree after finishing

four years of study you can choose to

continue to the next level of study

master’s degree programs are usually

about two years

so studying another topic in depth like

a very specific topic

for two more years and completing

coursework

will get you hopefully a master’s degree

so a master’s degree

in subject i have a master’s degree in

architecture

finally if you choose to continue

studying you can get a

phd a phd so a phd is the highest level

of education

we do not use degree with this

expression

i have a phd in medicine i have a phd

in communications whatever your subject

phds are done after master’s degrees

and they usually require another three

years depending on your course of study

so bachelor’s degree master’s degree phd

those are the three types of degree we

talk about

okay though if you have some other

type of certification some other kind of

qualification that did not come from a

university

or it’s not a degree this is a sentence

you might use to

express that here we use the same have

we’ll use this word i have a

certification

in skill so certifications

commonly are for a specific skill

something you are able to do

it could in some cases perhaps be a

subject

but we often see certifications for a

specific type of

skill so we’ll use certification which

a certification is a document or it’s

some kind of recognition

that you have achieved a level of

mastery

in this skill so you can say i have a

certification in skill

and finish the sentence there that’s

okay or i have a certification in

skill from a school or some other

organization

another good keyword to know for

something like this and maybe

for other things here too is this word

vocational school

vocational school so the root of

vocational is this word

vocation so vocation means job or

profession

so a vocational school is kind of like a

university or a college

but it’s a type of school students

attend

to learn like a specific skill so maybe

there’s like an electrician’s vocational

school or like some kind of construction

vocational school

or maybe like a computer or computer

related vocational school

so some people choose instead of going

a like large university or a large

college

they choose to focus on one skill and

they attend a vocational

school this is the word you can use to

describe that

so for example i have a certification

in english teaching from abc vocational

school for example

or i have a certification in first aid

from abc organization so you can talk

about many different skills with

something like this

so these are all kind of past tense ways

to talk about your education the things

that you have achieved

so things that are complete in other

words

so with this in mind i want to continue

to some present tense and future tense

expressions

here you’ll notice i’m going to use the

progressive tense

for a couple of these to talk about

future and ongoing

education related topics first let’s

look at this

i’m graduating from in

year so this is for students who

are currently in school you are in

school now this could be high school it

could be university or college it could

perhaps be a vocational school as well

i’m using the progressive tense here

because we can use the progressive tense

to talk about

an action in the future that we have a

high level of certainty of

so for example if you know you’re going

to graduate

in the year 2023 you can say i’m

graduating

in 2023. here i have

from in parentheses i had it over here

from with high school from university or

college

i’ve included this here because you can

say

if you like i’m graduating from high

school in 2023

or i’m graduating from university in

you can say that i included it in

parentheses here because

many times when you’re speaking with

someone they can guess

which level of education you are based

on your appearance

if you are a high school student perhaps

it’s easy to see that you’re studying in

high school right now

so you can choose to say this if you

like i’m graduating from high school

in 2023 if you want to be specific

you could change this if you like i’m

going to graduate in 2023 that’s fine as

well

this is just the one that i chose for

this lesson you cannot say however i

will graduate in 2023 or

if you do it’s gonna sound a little less

natural than i’m going to

so i’m graduating or i’m going to

graduate in 2023

sounds the best i recommend that pattern

okay

so let’s compare this or rather let’s

add to this

the present tense expressions for your

focuses of study

so over here we looked at how to express

your completed education i explained we

can use

major and minor as verbs and as nouns

so here i talked about using in and

was for past tense expressions we can

keep

the same idea here and just make it a

present tense statement

so if you are a student in university or

student in college

now you can say my major is

art my major is mathematics my major is

biochemistry

you can use my minor is the same idea

if you want to use these as verbs you

can say

for example i’m majoring in

i’m majoring in this is another thing

that you can say if you like

i’m majoring in

subject i feel however that

at least when i was a student i tended

to use this pattern

more i tended to use it more as a noun

than a verb and then i’ll actually use

it in verb form more

for past tense expressions that’s my

personal preference i think

both are correct those are both fine to

use i think i would probably use

this form a little more often okay

then if you want to be very specific

about your degree

which degree you’re currently studying

for you can use something like this

i’m studying for my bachelor’s

in subject i’m studying for my master’s

subject i’m studying for my phd in

subject so again we’re using these same

degree related vocabulary words and

again you can choose to include degree

after bachelor’s or master’s

in this expression i’m studying for my

bachelor’s degree

in subject i’m studying for my master’s

degree in subject is okay

i’m studying four so this progressive

tense

shows that this is something that is

ongoing for us

four shows us the purpose i’m studying

for

my master’s degree so don’t use two here

i’m studying

four it shows us the purpose the aim

okay

then i want to include a couple more

points down here

um for maybe depending on your situation

you might have something a little bit

different from

maybe typical studies so if you are

researching something like it’s perhaps

a little bit

in an education setting maybe a little

bit in like a business setting

depending on your your situation you can

use this

i’m researching pattern i’m researching

plus a topic so some people choose to

remain in a university

setting to do their research so you can

still use this even if you’re not a

student like i’m

researching communications in the usa

or i’m researching data use on the

internet

so again we use this ing the progressive

form

to show that it’s continuing this is

something that’s going on

now i’m researching topic finally

these last two example sentences are for

people who perhaps are thinking about

their studies

so if you are a high school student or

if you’re a junior high school student

maybe

you can use expressions like these i

want

to study subject i want to study subject

i want to study english i want to study

mathematics i want to study science i

want to study chemistry

so you can talk about the things you are

interested in

and maybe after high school the kinds of

things you want to learn more about

one more example i’m interested in

subject so i’m interested in art history

i’m interested in music i’m interested

whatever it is that you’re interested in

so you can use these two

to talk about maybe what you would like

to study in the future

when you get to university or to college

what do you want to do

so i’m interested in subject i want to

study

subject so use these two kind of future

future forward thinking ideas to talk

about

your goals for your studies in the

future okay so i want to finish today’s

lesson by looking at the

specific words that we use for school

years so

in high schools and in universities

throughout the us

we typically have four years that are

required for schooling

and for every year of schooling we have

a specific

word for the students in that year so

first year students second year students

third and fourth

each have a specific word we use so

the word we use for first year students

in high school and in university is

freshmen freshmen you’ll notice this

word

ends in man yes but we use this to talk

about

male and female students so all

first-year students are called fresh

men in the plural form fresh men

singular form is fresh

man i’m a freshman they are freshmen so

freshmen freshmen second year students

are called

sophomore students sophomore the

pronunciation here is

sophomore so in the plural form we say

sophomores sophomores a group of

sophomores or i’m a sophomore

third year students are called junior

junior students

i’m a junior student they are juniors

junior students are third year students

fourth year students are called senior

students

he’s a senior she’s a senior they are

seniors

so these are the four words you’ll hear

quite commonly

to talk about our your age or your level

of schooling

in high school or in university so you

can use these too

it’ll sound quite natural to use these

actually of course if you prefer you can

use first second third fourth year

that’s fine

as well but this is something that you

can use a little bit in your day-to-day

life

especially if you’re studying abroad

this will sound quite natural

okay so with that that’s a quick

introduction to some

education related expressions that you

can use i hope that this was helpful for

you and i hope that you found something

that you can use

to talk about your education but if you

have any questions or if there’s

something else you would like to know

how to say to explain your education

please feel free to leave a comment and

we will check it out of course if you

like the video don’t forget to give it a

thumbs up

subscribe to our channel if you have not

already and check us out at

englishclass101.com for some other

things that can help you with your

english studies

thanks very much for watching this

lesson and i will see you again soon

bye bye

want to speed up your language learning

take your very first lesson with us

you’ll start speaking in minutes and

master real conversations

just click the link in the description