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Hello English learners, welcome back to another lesson with us here at EnglishPod. My name is Marco

and I am Eric

and today we have a lesson for all our university students out there

that’s right. We’re talking about registering for University.

Okay, so it’s a difficult process sometimes, even in your own language. So we’re gonna try and make it a little bit easier by giving you some of the common words you would need to register at a university.

All right, well I think it’s time we get started by listening to the dialogue and we’re going to listen to a young female student as she tries to choose her classes.

Excuse me? Is this where I register? I’d like to sign up for my courses for next semester.

Yes, of course. I need your student ID please.

Here you are.

Okay, Susan. It says here that you are a business major and you are in your second year. Is this information correct?

Yes. I do want to take some additional credits this year to get a minor in psychology.

Sure. That’s not a problem. Do you have the list of courses you want to take this semester?

Yeah, here’s my list. I’m not sure if the class schedule will allow me to take all of them though.

Yeah, that’s perfect. What about the subjects for your minor?

Oh yeah! Almost forgot! I need to take fundamental linguistics, consumer psychology and neuroanatomy.

Wow, you are going to be busy this semester!

Okay, here you go. You are registered now; you’ll have to make your first tuition payment before classes start.

All right. Great. A very good student, taking a lot of classes this semester.

I know, and it sounds like some of them are pretty hard as well.

Yeah, they are. Well, she used some of those very common phrases that we would need when we are registering at University. So let’s take a look at them now in language take away.

Language take away

Okay, so the first thing I think we need to deal with this word: to register

register

so register for University. Okay so we’ve mentioned this word many times so I think it would be a good idea to listen to some examples and then we’ll come back and explain it

Example 1

I registered to attend the conference on international trade this month.

Example 2

It is your obligation as a good citizen to register to vote.

Example 3

It is necessary to register on our website before joining the conference.

So when you register for something, you put your name down on a list, right? So in this case. when you register for University, you put your, you officially put your name on the list of students in that course.

Okay, so you can register for University. What else can you register for?

Register for a class. You can even register to vote.

Okay, so register. Now she was registering for her classes and we saw these words that we know already but it’s a good idea to take a look at them. We heard that she is a business major.

so a major

a major

a business major

and what is your major?

The major is, the major area that you study. The most important area that you study.

The area where you’re specialized.

Yeah, the area that you focus on.

Okay. Now, we heard another one that’s called a minor.

So this is another area that you study, but it is less important than your major.

Okay so major and your minor.

So let’s give an example. Imagine you must take 100 classes to graduate from University. Maybe you have to take 50 for your major and maybe 30 for your minor.

Okay, very good. And now on your degree, on your title, does it say what is your major and minor?

Well, I think it depends on the University but in my case, yes.

okay, very good. So major and minor. Now, related to this and what you were saying about your classes, it takes us to our next word which is credits

credits

credits

credits

Now, this is easily confused with classes, sometimes.

that’s right. Well a credit is kind of a point, so like maybe, so in University you need a certain number of credits or points to graduate.

Okay, so suppose you need 100 credits to graduate.

So that’s not 100 courses because each course might be worth four or six or eight credits, depending on how important it is.

very good. So maybe the classes that are part of your major will have more credits. All right, very good. So, and now we have our last word in this dialogue and it was tuition

tuition

She had to pay her tuition

so tuition is the money that you must pay for education.

Okay, only for education.

That’s right. So University tuition, private school tuition or even language course tuition.

Okay, so a tuition is the money you must pay for school only.

Yeah

So we’ve seen a lot of great words used for registering at University. So I think it’s time to listen to the dialogue for the second time a little bit slower and then we’ll come back and take a look at some phrases.

Excuse me? Is this where I register? I’d like to sign up for my courses for next semester.

Yes, of course. I need your student ID please.

Here you are.

Okay, Susan. It says here that you are a business major and you are in your second year. Is this information correct?

Yes. I do want to take some additional credits this year to get a minor in psychology.

Sure. That’s not a problem. Do you have the list of courses you want to take this semester?

Yeah, here’s my list. I’m not sure if the class schedule will allow me to take all of them though.

Yeah, that’s perfect. What about the subjects for your minor?

Oh yeah! Almost forgot! I need to take fundamental linguistics, consumer psychology and neuroanatomy.

Wow, you are going to be busy this semester!

Okay, here you go. You are registered now; you’ll have to make your first tuition payment before classes start.

All right, so it’s time for putting it together

Putting it together

And we’re going to look at some phrases here that we can use to talk about education and university and we can use them in different ways.

all right, and our first phrase is actually very similar to register

to sign up for something

okay, I want to sign up for

I’d like to sign up for my courses.

I think it would be a good idea if we listen to some examples of how we can use this phrase.

Example 1.

I signed up for a one-year gym membership.

Example 2

if you want to assist in meeting, you need to sign up first.

Example 3

I hate signing up for things online because they just send you spam emails.

Okay, so I can see that to sign up for something that is to agree to take part in it.

Okay, so it’s a little bit more informal than register.

Yeah, exactly, less formal.

All right, so moving on to our second phrase. This is very important because it’s often used improperly, right?

Yeah, people often make mistakes with this phrase.

All right, so let’s look at this phrase: second year

so she is in her second year.

Now it seems very simple, so why are we explaining this?

Well, it often gets confused with grade. So when we talk about University, we talk about first-year, second-year, third-year, fourth-year. We cannot say grade 1, grade 2, grade 3, grade 4

or year 1, year 2

no, it’s always first year, second year, third-year, fourth-year

okay, very good or last year

yeah, last year

my last year of college

exactly

very good, so now you know how you can explain to someone what year of college or university you’re in.

Yes, that’s right

very good. And we have one more phrase to you and it was when she was getting her class schedule

class schedule

class schedule

now a schedule is the list of things you do at what time

right, so it’s the timetable of your day or your week

yeah

All right, and your class schedule will say all the classes that you have and what time there at.

So what other types of schedules can we have?

You also have maybe a gym schedule

that’s rights or even a work schedule

right, so we have different types of schedules and you can use it depending on what you’re doing.

Those are all the phrases we have for putting it together today and now let’s listen to the dialogue for the last time and then we’ll come back Excuse me? Is this where I register? I’d like to sign up for my courses for next semester.

Yes, of course. I need your student ID please.

Here you are.

Okay, Susan. It says here that you are a business major and you are in your second year. Is this information correct?

Yes. I do want to take some additional credits this year to get a minor in psychology.

Sure. That’s not a problem. Do you have the list of courses you want to take this semester?

Yeah, here’s my list. I’m not sure if the class schedule will allow me to take all of them though.

Yeah, that’s perfect. What about the subjects for your minor?

Oh yeah! Almost forgot! I need to take fundamental linguistics, consumer psychology and neuroanatomy.

Wow, you are going to be busy this semester!

Okay, here you go. You are registered now; you’ll have to make your first tuition payment before classes start.

All right, so we were talking about second year, first year, third-year, etc

Yeah

Now there are also other names that we give to each year, both for high school and university

and I think this is only for America like in the United Statesو we don’t do this in Canada and I always got so confused, so Marco, what is the name you give to first year students?

Okay, so first-year students are called freshman.

okay because they’re fresh

because they’re fresh, yeah They just came from middle school or they just came from high school.

All right and what the second-year students?

They’re called sophomores

Okay, cause they’re soft

It’s not soft. It’s sophomore, like s o p h

sophomore

sophomore, and then third-year students are called juniors

okay, because they’re almost the Junior manager

exactly because then last students are called seniors.

They’re the oldest guys in the school.

Exactly, so you can say yeah, I’m a sophomore at Arizona State University.

Okay, so we only do this in America thought, right?

Yes, it is very– and not only for university but also for high school

okay

all right guys, that’s all the time we have for today. I hope you enjoyed this lesson and if you have any questions or comments, or you want to share with us your experiences in high school or university, please come to the website at Englishpod.com.

That’s right so Marco and I are there to answer your questions and until next time. Thanks for listening and goodbye.