Job Interview: How to talk about your education

Hi, my name is Rebecca, and in today's lesson, I'm going to show you how to talk about your

educational background or academic qualifications.

Now, this is, of course, an important subject that might come up quite often in your life.

It could come up in your personal life, such as when you meet somebody at a party, or it

could come up in an academic or a professional context when you're asked to talk about your

educational qualifications.

So let's look at some ways in which you can do this, okay?

So on the board, I've written the names of five people.

I've written the degree that they hold.

I've written the subject, the name of the subject in which they specialized.

And last, I've written the name of the university that they graduated from.

So now, let's try to make some sentences to describe what's going on here, all right?

So we could say about the first person, Tom, "Tom has a B.A. in History from the University

of Toronto."

"Tom has a B.A. in History from the University of Toronto."

Right?

You see that here, "Tom has a B.A. in History from the University of Toronto."

Now, one point about the university.

Universities are usually named in two ways.

Either we say, "University of something", or we say, "Something University".

If we say, "University of something", like, "University of Toronto", then before the word

"university", you need to add the word "the".

So, "Tom has a B.A. in History from the University of Toronto."

Now, if Tom had studied, had graduated from another university that we have in Toronto

called York University, then we would say, "Tom has a B.A. in History from York University."

Then you don't need to say "the", you just say the name and followed by the word "university".

And you will see that in the examples that follow, okay?

Let's look at another way, by the way, before we go on to Maria, let's look at another way

we can talk about Tom.

We could say, "Tom graduated, Tom graduated from the University of Toronto with a B.A.

in History."

B.A., of course, is Bachelor of Arts.

"Tom graduated from the University of Toronto with a B.A. in History."

So, you could also express it that way, okay?

Whatever is easier.

The first one I gave you is probably the easiest.

Let's look at another example, Maria.

So, we could say, "Maria holds an M.B.A. from Harvard University."

You could also say, "Maria has an M.B.A." or "Maria holds an M.B.A. from Harvard University."

Master of Business Administration is an M.B.A.

Now, you'll notice that I said, "an M.B.A."

Here I said, "Tom has a B.A."

Here I said, "Maria has an M.B.A."

Why is that?

Why did I not say, "a M.B.A."?

Because the letter M, if we actually were to write or spell out the letter M, we would

spell it out as E-M, M.

It has a vowel sound at the beginning.

And whenever you have a vowel sound, not just a vowel, but also a vowel sound at the beginning

of something, then before that, you need to say, "an M.B.A." so that it flows more smoothly

than saying, "a M."

Okay?

"An M.B.A."

All right?

Let's look at the third example, Hassan, right?

"Hassan graduated from the University of Cambridge with a B.S.C. in Microbiology."

All right?

I'll say that for you again.

"Hassan graduated from the University of Cambridge with a B.S.C. in Microbiology."

B.S.C. stands for Bachelor of Science.

Okay?

Let's take another example.

"Olga," now we can say this, all of these we can say in a variety of ways, so I'm going

to show you another way.

"Olga obtained an M.A. in Psychology from Oxford University."

"Olga obtained an M.A. in Psychology from Oxford University."

You could say, "She obtained an M.A."

What does "obtained" mean?

It means she got it.

So you could also say, "Olga got an M.A. in Psychology from Oxford University."

You could also say, "Olga completed an M.A. in Psychology at Oxford University."

Okay?

There are various ways in which you can say it.

Some are more informal, some are more formal.

So depending on the situation, you could change the verb a little bit.

The last one here is "Raj."

So we could say here that "Raj has a Ph.D.," "Raj has a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT."

All right?

Sometimes they also say, "Raj was awarded a Ph.D. in Economics by MIT."

All right?

So now, you should have the means to describe your educational background and qualifications.

So a good thing that you could do right after this lesson is to write a few sentences to

describe your educational background using any of these patterns, okay?

As I said, there are many different ways in which to explain and describe your educational

background, and you could use any of the examples that I've given you here.

If you'd like a little more practice in this, you could also go to our website at www.engvid.com.

There you'll find a little quiz on this, and that will help you to review some of the points

that we've talked about today.

All right?

Thanks very much.

Good luck with your English.

Bye for now.