課程 vs 功課 vs 課業

[JayRofi]

Hi,

 

I am wondering if someone a little more advanced in Chinese than I am would be able to elaborate a little bit on the nuance/difference between when we would use the following words that basically all mean "lesson" of some sort: 課程 vs 功課 vs 課業 

 

Thanks!

Jay

[Wei-Ming 魏明]

MDBG is my favorite dictionary for these sorts of questions. The link has a good starting answer.

[JayRofi]

Hi Wei-Ming, thanks for the suggestion. MDBG is actually where I copied and pasted those characters from. MDBG is great.  Im more interested in the nuances around when they would be used. For example, One word is defined as "lesson" or "course" but in English these are very different meanings, its not even clear how they could be attached to the same word. In English "course" is much more formal and academic sounding than "lesson". MDBG does not provide a lot of additional information regarding how they are perceived in general usage.   

[markhavemann]

Finding example sentences on Pleco or a website like https://zaojv.com/ (there might be better alternatives) is also a good way to get an idea of the differences.  

[JayRofi]

1 hour ago, markhavemann said:

Finding example sentences on Pleco or a website like https://zaojv.com/ (there might be better alternatives) is also a good way to get an idea of the differences.  

 

Im not quite at the point where I can use a full Chinese website like zaojv, although it does look interesting.  Pleco seems a good place to start though. I didn't think of that.

[Wei-Ming 魏明]

Chineseboost.com and eng.ichacha.net have lots of easy examples for common words. Chineseboost provides pinyin. Eng.ichacha.net does not, but MandarinSpot works just fine for that.

 

課程 is used to mean curriculum or academic course. E.g. 語言課程 - language course.

功課 and 作業 are used interchangeably to refer to an assignment or homework. 家課 is specifically to be completed at home. E.g. 我需要回家寫功課。

 課業/學業 seems to me to be less commonly used and broadly covers any of the above. At job interviews they vaguely 「問你的課業」, meaning they want you to describe some highlights from your academic background and what can justifiably claim to be good at. Students also use it to mean a homwork assignment. My co-teachers use it to mean my overall curriculum.