[DEGREE or GRADUATION] ?

A very common mistake non-native speakers make, especially speakers of neo-Latin languages (such as Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and French), is using the term 'graduation' instead of 'degree', or just using the two of them interchangeably. In Brazilian Portuguese, for instance, people will say 'graduação' just to make it sound more formal (and chic), which will often be direct-translated that into English as graduation. It's wrong and if you do this too, well, you are making a mistake. Here is why:

Graduation is a ceremony, which takes place at the moment people finish their studies at universities and get their diplomas. This can be both the event where you have a party or the moment when people throw their little hats up in the air. It is not used to talk what you studied. If you want to talk about that you must say 'degree'. 

Imagine, for instance, I have studied Engineering and finished it. If that's the case, then I am engineer. Therefore, I have a DEGREE (not a graduation) in engineering.

#vocabularytip