jutfrank
VIP Member
- Joined
- Mar 5, 2014
- Member Type
- English Teacher
- Native Language
- English
- Home Country
- England
- Current Location
- England
Could you explain the difference between "course" and "class"?
I can at least give you my way of understanding it:
A course is essentially a product that an educational institution provides. It consists mainly of a series of input sessions in which the educational content (the 'course content') is delivered, and there is usually some kind of certification upon satisfactory completion. At university level, the course may be an undergraduate degree, for example. In order to join an institution as a consumer, you must first enrol on a course. The use of the preposition on here is similar to how we use the same preposition to talk about being officially listed. That is, your name is on a list of members who have the right to attend the input sessions.
Now, the most basic sense of 'class':
In education, 'class' relates to a way that an institution has of grouping people enrolled on a course, usually for some purpose of organisational convenience. This might be because there are too many people to teach the course content to all together (so the students must be divided into smaller more manageable groups), or because the students differ in level/ability/age/sex/other, or because the students are presently focused on a different component of the course, or for many other possible reasons. Basically, there is classification of some kind.
One of my responsibilities at the school where I work is what I call 'classing' the students. This involves putting the students into different 'classes', based on their level, length of stay, the kind of English they want to learn, etc. I put some people in general English classes, some in exam classes, some in business English classes, and so on. The normal preposition to use with class is in because the idea is that by definition there is a limited extension to any class. In other words, the members of any class are seen as 'contained' within it.
Confusingly, native-speakers also use the word class to refer to the group of people itself, and others to the individual session (usually lasting an hour or two and also called a 'lesson') in which the course content is taught.
It seems to me from what I have learnt on this thread that people in the US routinely use the word class to refer to one particular component of a larger course. So if you're at university doing an undergraduate degree, the course may require that you elect from a set of options with which you can focus your learning. For example, suppose you're studying math on a three-year degree course. You have the option of specifying which areas of math you would like to focus on (which 'classes' you'd like to 'take'). You decide to take Advanced Algebra, Geometry 101, and Non-Euclidean Trigonometry.
(I'm not very familiar with how US universities operate so I trust someone will correct me if I've got anything seriously wrong. Also, I don't want to overstate any varietal difference of use between AmE and BrE. I think that BrE speakers might also use the word 'class' in the latter sense that I've described above, the difference perhaps being a lesser propensity to do so.)
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