This is an All-Ears English Podcast episode 2253 class lesson or course.
Learn the difference today.
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Today we take a question from our listener, Delphine, who is a middle school teacher.
Find out what the key differences are between four education terms and find out what you should avoid directly translating from your native language.
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Hey, Lindsay, how are you?
Excellent, Michelle. How are you doing today?
Good. I'm good. Lindsay, what was your favorite class in high school?
Do you remember? I really liked sociology.
I thought that was super interesting.
Yeah, that was a junior year, I think, in high school.
What about you? I took a sociology class in college, not in high school, but I liked that a lot.
But I did like my English class.
I had a great teacher. So I would say that was my favorite class.
It's fun to reflect on high school times and college times.
It's a common conversation topic, even as we become adults, move into our careers, don't you think?
Absolutely, because people talk about these things all the time.
They share their stories, or even if they have kids, maybe they're talking about something and dealing with their kids' education.
So many ways that we talk about education to connect in English and everyday conversation.
Yeah, so guys, hit the follow button right now that is your first agenda item for today's episode.
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All right. Yes. So we had a listener question today.
We love your questions.
Don't we wish? Yes. Yes.
We do. I love this one. And this listener's name is Delphine.
And I have to say that's one of my favorite names.
I think that is such a beautiful name.
That's a beautiful name.
That was the name of my French exchange friend in high school when I did a French exchange in French Conte.
Uh, France, she was like my, like my buddy kind of, you know what I mean?
You get paired with someone.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And the program and you stayed at their house.
They say your house when they come to your anyways.
Good memories. Yeah, we had a French exchange student.
His name was Gregory. So I agree.
Okay. Love it. Love it. Fantastic.
So for Delphine, here we go.
She says, hello, Lindsay.
I love your podcast. I listen to girls every day.
I'm, that's great. I'm a middle school English teacher in the North of France.
And I learned so much from your show.
Who we love that we love to hear it.
Awesome. Yeah. I have a question concerning vocab.
When do you use the words class course lesson period to talk about school?
I am lost. Thanks for your help, Delphine.
Oh, love it. Great question.
I love that we have teachers listening to this show as well.
How cool. And of course, yeah, we didn't say this, but if you're a teacher, I'm sure we do have a lot of teachers listening.
We do. So this is definitely good to know for professional reasons as well.
100% guys, go back and check out episode 2230.
That's our recommendation for today.
How should you describe someone's appearance in English?
That would play out in every aspect of our lives also whether we're in school or in our careers.
All right. Yep. So Michelle, let's get into answering the question for Delphine and I listen to this.
Okay. So Lindsay, what's a course?
A course is kind of just a fancy adult way of saying a class, right?
At some point classes became courses as I progressed through education.
I think it must have been in college, right?
Yeah. What you said that.
Yeah. That's my feeling is that it's more for higher education, a college course.
You could say a college class too, but course is just a little bit more buttoned up as Lindsay likes to say, I think.
Because you wouldn't say second grade course, right?
You wouldn't say, oh, and my son's kindergarten course, right?
Those aren't courses. Although I have heard a mis-translation, I have heard kind of direct translations when people translate directly from their native language is talking about younger levels.
But I think it's important what we're saying here, Michelle.
Class is more for younger kids like elementary school, middle school, high school, and then ivory towers, right?
Higher education. And course, PhD masters, courses.
Your courses. So that's the most important thing, right?
Right, right, right. So you could say, can any of the courses I took in freshman year transfer over?
Yeah. Perfect. And you thought about transferring to another college, right?
When you were in school?
I did. In freshman year, I thought about it.
But then once I hit second semester, I was good.
Yeah, first time near can be taught.
Do you do? Yeah, I thought about it also first semester freshman year.
And I wanted to go to like a more of a city campus.
I think I want to go to GW or BU, go to like the cities.
But then once I got into my tennis program and, you know, just got into the swing of things.
It's very normal to question your choice of colleges.
Yeah. I think it first, yeah.
It's a scary time. You're freshman year because here in the US, we just completely change our lives.
We move out of our childhood homes, usually far away from our families.
And it's like, see ya. You're an adult now.
Yeah. And when you think about going into, I mean, I was 17 when I started college.
Wow. And that's because I have a late birthday, right?
So it's just I'm, I'm always been, like pretty much the youngest in my grade because I have a December birthday.
So I was only 17. And gosh, when I think about, I mean, I have a five year old.
And when I think about what in 12 years, he's, I'm, he's, oh, that's so sad.
But it, yeah, it's crazy to think about how young everybody goes off.
It's, it's really a distinctive thing about American culture from what I understand, you know, for what we talked about our listeners and people we've, that I've known internationally, staying closer to home or continuing to live with the family and maybe taking classes closer to home is just very different the way we do it.
It's pretty intense. All right.
So that is a course and then a class, that's it Michelle.
It's like, class is a course.
This is a class. No, but to me, this one is more universal.
You could use it not only to describe a class, but as a general term as a place.
So like, I got to get to class.
You wouldn't say I got to get to course.
Yeah. That's right. That's right.
So kind of a destination, a location.
Right. You would never say I got to get to course.
And then I could say to you, how was class?
Right. When you came back and again, so the, would you say how was course?
I mean, would you say how was your course?
Even, even that sounds funny to me.
I don't think that you would just say, oh, how was the, how, you might say, how was the course?
Do you recommend taking that course at the end of?
Yeah. Yeah. But you don't say, oh, hey, how was course?
How is your course today?
It's, it becomes class.
It's more conversational.
Yeah, that's really interesting.
Yeah. I mean, more as a destination or something you did.
And I just, I do want to back up also and just say courses also applied to adult education.
Like our students that join our courses online courses, right?
There's a lot of taking a course in CPR, for example, or a wilderness survival course.
So it definitely goes beyond just every tower's higher education.
Right. Yeah, yeah, or you could just say this class is tough.
Yes. Or I took a class on this last year.
Or in this case, it could also be course.
Like I took a course on AP psychology or whatever, criminal psych last year.
Yes. Wow. It's a little harder.
Interesting. It's a question that we thought.
Now, I have also read that course and class in college can actually be different in the sense that a course is a series of classes.
Yeah, that's correct. Yeah, I was not always used that way.
So the course, you know, yeah, I would say a course is the umbrella term and then it's broken up into classes.
Exactly. So that's why that's why when we talk about, oh, how was class?
Class. Yes. Right. So Michelle, let me ask you this.
So in a typical college class, like I said, I took bio 101.
It was so hard. It kicked my butt.
Yeah. And that course, that was a course.
That could also be called a class.
But my question for you is in a typical college course, how many individual classes did you have to attend to complete the course?
Well, let's think about it.
So I guess usually it's once or twice.
I mean, I would say it's usually twice a week, right?
I mean, it could be once if it's a very long one.
It could be twice or three times.
Yes. So, and then what a semester could be like 12 weeks.
12 weeks, yeah. Yeah. So about 24 or 25 classes maybe, but it really depends on how the class is split up.
Yeah. So that's a good way to think about it.
So I like what you said before courses sometimes in umbrella term, umbrella term, which is made up of individual classes.
Yes. Yes. Exactly. Okay.
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Okay, Michelle, we are coming into lesson now.
Let's talk about this one.
Okay. So lesson is what happens during the class.
Right. So it's what the teacher is teaching.
So this our lesson or Delphine, I bet you have a lot of lessons.
So a lot of times with teachers, you have to do lesson plan.
Yes. So that's what you're teaching.
So pay attention to the lesson today because there will be a pop quiz sometime in the next two weeks.
Yeah. And it could be more informal, right?
So not actually a lesson taught, but something that you learn in your life.
And this is another way totally different way.
Yeah. I always, that's kind of a hallmark Michelle of TV in the 90s and the 80s.
Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sitting on my knee and we'll talk about the lesson for today.
Right. Right. There was, oh, it was just like this moral aspect to American TV in the 80s and 90s, which I think is kind of gone.
Like, their love shows are trying to do the opposite of that and not need to teach a lesson.
Right. Right. Well, that's what someone I think they said, Seinfeld was so different because there were never any lessons.
There was, there was nothing to learn.
You don't want to hire the characters.
There weren't any lessons, right?
And we talked about that.
And that's kind of entry, that's kind of appealing for some people because it's kind of more like life.
Like there isn't a lesson every day, you know, right?
Right. Right. You're just living your life and things happen and you keep moving forward.
Time keeps going, you know?
That's all right. Yeah.
It's interesting. So give us an example then here about it.
You could say, I learned my lesson.
I won't be late to work again.
So maybe I was late and something bad happened because of it.
And I said, yeah. Yeah, I learned my lesson.
So I'm going to make a change.
Right. Or the lesson is to never doubt yourself.
And again, that could be from a movie that you saw a movie, a message or just your own life, living your life and something happened.
Okay. So let's get into period now.
What do we think here? Okay.
So period. So this is not used in college.
We've been talking a lot about college and higher education.
This isn't for elementary school.
I would say this is more in middle school and high school.
Yes. So a period is because, okay, when you're in elementary school, typically correct me if maybe you did something different.
Lindsay, you were in one class, right?
Right. You had, yeah, you had your one teacher.
And then as you move up, you start to rotate to different classes.
So you have like first period, second period, third period.
So first period, you might have English class, second period, physical education, whatever it is.
Yeah. Or maybe new teachers would come to you as a group or you as a group would move.
We would go to music in elementary school, I mean, right?
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But that's the difference.
At least in US culture currently in 2024, when you move into middle school, you're moving on your own to your next class because everyone's schedule is different.
You have a locker. I remember when I started middle school that felt like a scary step to think, oh, I have to find my classes now by myself.
I have to open my locker.
It felt like a big move towards independence.
And of course, our education system and our culture is all about independence, right?
So it makes sense. Yeah, we're trying to teach you to move in your own way, I guess.
I never thought of it that way, but I guess you could say that.
Yeah. I remember sometimes being stressed if my classes were a little too far apart and I only had five minutes and it was a little bit stressful.
I also remember we had, did you ever have a block schedule?
Yeah, we had that too. Yeah.
So that's like, if you have seven periods, so maybe the first day you'll have one, two, three, four, and then the next day, five, six, seven, one, two, three, four, five, so you'll just kind of rotate around.
Also, you didn't have that.
Yeah, that was kind of cute.
Yeah. I got to keep going.
So yeah, so our listener Delphine is a middle school teacher, I think she said.
So this may be being used at your school too.
I don't know how it's done internationally.
I really don't know, but that is how they do it in the US in middle school and high school.
All right. Right. Or in high school, you might have seven, you might have all the periods in one day, but your classes are shorter.
Right. Right. Right. Yeah.
Like, for example, let's meet up at my locker after third period, right?
That might be something you might say.
All right. Yeah. Good. Okay.
We're two now, Michelle.
We're two. Yeah. Really good, a really good question.
I mean, Lindsay, what makes up a good class or course in your opinion?
What is it that makes it your favorite?
I think a lot of, I mean, it's broad question.
But I think a lot of dialogue, a lot of conversation, a lot of opportunities for students to question the material and ask their own questions creates a critical thinker, which is something we really need in society, especially now.
You know, do you think it was more, okay, maybe this can be one of our poll, our poll question for today.
Do you think a class is, do you, would you prefer a really entertaining good teacher or really interesting content?
Like, if you had to choose one, oh, man, that's hard.
Probably good content.
I kind of need both, but if the content is good, oh, that's a good question.
That's hard, Michelle.
I don't know. I say the teacher.
Honestly, I mean, when I think about, when I think about my English classes, because those were two of my favorite, and it was because of the teacher, it wasn't that I loved what I was learning necessarily, but I loved the teacher.
So I personally think when you look back and remember it, you're more so thinking about the teacher.
Yeah. I think it matters, especially at the young ages, teachers have, they need to get students into it, get students excited, you know.
I mean, I think about learning history in school, and I just really was like, I don't care because I haven't been to these places.
But then after I went to some of those places, I was like, wow, this is really consequential and fascinating, you know.
Sometimes I wish I could go back to school and just learn, actually pay attention.
Exactly. Exactly. I know.
It's too bad. Yeah. The incredible gift to be able to sit down in class and just learn all day.
Yeah. It's amazing. But at the time, you do not appreciate it.
Yeah. What is that expression, that famous expression?
Youth is wasted on the young.
Yeah. It's true. Youth is wasted on the young.
It's a great one, guys. You'll hear that in American English all the time.
All right. Let's get into a role play here.
So we are college students and friends.
Here we go. All right. Okay.
So what are you taking next semester?
Hmm. I'm thinking about taking a course on French theater.
Well that sounds so interesting.
Oh my gosh. I'm so sorry.
I have to go. I'm late to class.
Oh no. Same here. Let's walk together.
Okay. There's going to be a lesson on science fiction writing today and I just can't miss it.
Nice. So here we used all three.
We didn't use period and why is that Michelle that we didn't use period?
The context. This is college, right?
So. So. Remember that. Yeah.
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