Mastering Essential Education and Career Terms

Essential Education and Career Vocabulary

Building a strong vocabulary is essential for academic and professional success. Below are key terms and phrasal verbs related to education and the workplace.

Academic and Professional Qualifications

• Careers: A job that you do for a significant part of your life, especially one for which you are specifically trained.
• Apprenticeship: A period of time spent working as an apprentice to learn a trade.
• Vocational qualification: A professional title or certification related to a specific craft or trade.
• Degree: A qualification that proves you have successfully completed a course of study at a college or university.
• Undergraduate: A student at a college or university who has not yet received their first university degree.
• Graduate: A person who has earned a university degree.

University Life and Finances

• Tuition fees: Money that you have to pay to matriculate or attend a school.
• Student debt: Money owed on a loan that was taken out to pay for educational expenses.
• Scholarship: An amount of money given to a person by an organization to pay for their education.
• Grades: A letter or other symbol indicating the relative quality of a student's work.
• Lecture: A talk given to a group of people about a specific subject.

Study Habits and Exam Preparation

• Retake: To repeat an exam because you failed it previously.
• Cheat: To do something that is not honest in order to get something.
• Cram: To learn a lot of information in a short time in preparation for an exam.
• Learn by heart: To memorize something completely.
• Focus on: To put your attention into something.
• Get distracted: To be unable to pay attention.
• Go in one ear and out the other: To be forgotten quickly.
• Go through: To look again at work you have already done.
• Take in: To understand something you hear or read.
• Recall (v): The ability to remember.
• Recall (n): To cancel something.
• Say something out loud / aloud: To say something in a voice that people can hear.

Common Actions and Phrasal Verbs

• Dropped out of: To give up on your studies.
• Whispering: To say something quietly, in a low voice.
• Clenching: To apply strength against something (apretar).
• Tightly: In a rigid or firm manner.
• Doodling: A stroke made with a pen or pencil which means nothing.
• Weird: Something strange or unusual.
• Breaks down: To separate into smaller parts.
• Come up with: To think about something such as an idea or a plan.
• Dates back: To have existed for a particular length of time or since a particular time.
• Dreamed up: To invent something.
• Figure out: To understand or solve something.
• Kick off: To start something.
• Look at: To think about a subject carefully so that it is going to happen.
• Look forward to: To feel excited about something that is going to happen.
• Talk into: To persuade someone to do something.
• Take off: To suddenly start to be successful or popular.
• Go for: To choose a particular option.