Key Language for Your Education Section

Hi, and welcome back to a new module in our course, Build Your Professional ePortfolio in English. In this module, we are going to learn important key language to use in your resume. A resume is a document that contains information about your professional abilities, and it is the most common type of document used for job applications, however even if you are not looking for a job at this moment, it is always a good idea to kep your resume up to date and available for viewers to see. When they visit your ePortfolio site. Two essential parts of any resume are your education and your professional experience. Both these parts are presented in a series of bullet points containing the degrees you received and the jobs you had. In this particular lesson, we will focus on writing about your education. We’re going to learn a little bit about your vocabulary for the most common degree types and date formats that normally follow them. So let’s get started. Writing the education section of your resume includes writing the degree you received. The university, college or school you went to. And the time you spent during that program. We’re going to start with writing the name of your highest level of education in English. Now it’s important to remember that names we have for degrees or diplomas can vary from country to country. So we need to use vocabulary that is familiar to most native English Speakers. Up to high school level graduates, the word diploma is used more commonly. However most education beyond that is to gain a degree and there are different names for each one. We’re going to focus on these four an associate’s degree, a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, and a doctorate degree. If your degree does not translate directly, choose the type that best matches your degree. So what does each degree represent? The first type of degree is an Associate’s degree. An Associate’s degree is generally a two year degree. Associate degree programs train students to complete certain technical functions. It normally does not include research development. And it’s considered higher than a high school diploma but less than a bachelor’s degree. If you have a similar type of degree, write Associate’s Degree plus your field of study in your resume. For example Associate’s Degree in Landscaping Design or Associate’s Degree in Administrative Support. The second type of degree is a Bachelor’s Degree. A Bachelor’s Degree is a type of undergraduate degree and it is the degree you receive after four to five years of college or university studies. After completing their bachelor’s degree, students normally have academic and technical experience. An entry for your bachelor’s education would be Bachelor’s Degree in World History or Bachelor’s Degree in Animal Science. The next type of degree we’ll look at is a Master’s Degree. It can take one to two years and it is necessary to have finished your Bachelor’s before starting your Master’s. A Master’s Degree focuses more on specialization and research and it is considered a graduate degree. Some Master’s Degrees require written theses, while others do not. It is not necessary to include that information on your resume. An entry for your Master’s education would be Master’s Degree in Early Childhood Education or Master’s Degree in Physics. The last type of degree is a Doctorate, and it can take three or more years to complete. A Doctorate is usually considered the highest degree. If you have a Doctorate, the best way to write it would be Doctorate Degree in Spatial Geometry. Or Doctorate Degree in Botany. In some cases, people use abbreviations for the degree names, such as a BA for Bachelor’s of Arts degree. MBA for Master of Business Administration and PhD for a Doctorate of Philosophy degree. You can find out how to write the right abbreviation in the resources for this lesson. The second step to writing your education on your resume is to write where you received your education. Along with the name of the university, college or institute you went to, you should also include the city and country where you went to school. It is important to add the location and the country to help your employers locate your educational institution incase they need to contact them for references. So for instance Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Alternatively Master’s Degree in Computer Science. Hanoi University of Science Science and Technology, Hanoi, Vietnam. How would you write your educational background? By writing the name of your school and the name of the country where it’s located you make it easy for English speakers to understand what country and culture you have experienced along with your educational background. Finally, remember to indicate the period of time of your education. This date represents when you started and this date represents when you finished your course or, the month and year you graduated. If you’re still a student and haven’t graduated yet, you can still include the start date and then include when you are expected to graduate. In this situation, your education information can look like this. Let’s wrap up what we’ve just learned. In this lesson we’ve learned about how to write about your education in your resume. We learned how to write the type of degree or diploma you have. The name and location of your school and the dates you attended during your program. In our next lesson you’re going to learn how to write about your professional experience in your resume. I look forward to seeing you then.