School in Spanish: classroom, homework, and exam words

The Spanish word for school is escuela, and the words around it split cleanly by what they name: the room is el aula (classroom), the take-home work is los deberes (homework), the test is el examen, and the mark you get back is la nota (grade in American English, mark in British English). Vocabcord's Spanish corpus grades 24 school and classroom words at A2, on top of 8 starter words at A1 and a further 22 across B1 to C2 as the vocabulary turns academic. Below is the full A2 classroom set with audio, the earlier and later words that surround it, and two words, nota and trabajo, that quietly mean something different depending on which corpus entry you land on.

24 classroom, homework, and exam words

This is the education slice of Vocabcord's A2 Spanish Work, Money & School pack. Tap the play button on any row to hear it.

Nota is worth pausing on for British and American readers alike: it is the everyday Spanish word for the mark you get back on a test, whether you call that a grade (American English) or a mark (British English). And libro de texto (textbook) is one of the few entries here that is two words instead of one, which is also why it still counts as a single vocabulary item rather than a phrase.

The starter set: escuela, and eight A1 school words

Before any of the words above, Vocabcord's A1 Spanish set already covers escuela (school) and eight more: estudiante (student), profesor (teacher), clase (class), lección (lesson), deberes (homework), examen (test), universidad (university), and curso (course). Three of those nine words, profesor, examen, and universidad, reappear as separate corpus entries at A2 with their own ids and their own example sentences, glossed there as professor, exam, and college rather than teacher, test, and university. Same Spanish word, two levels, two shades of English on either side of it.

What's in the pencil case

Three A1 objects round out the classroom: lápiz (pencil), bolígrafo (pen), and cuaderno (notebook). None of the three changes between British and American English, which makes them an easy set to bolt onto the school words above once aula and deberes are settled.

Grades, marks, and passing an exam

Getting the mark and keeping it straight runs through four words. Nota is the mark or grade itself: sacó una buena nota means she got a good grade (American) or she got a good mark (British), and both translations are correct for the same Spanish sentence. Aprobar is to pass, and suspender is to fail, so espero aprobar el examen is I hope to pass the exam, and the opposite fear is tenía miedo de suspender el examen (I was afraid of failing the exam). Getting there takes repasar, which British English calls revise and American English calls review or study for a test, as in tengo que repasar para el examen (I have to revise, or review, for the exam). A short quiz along the way is una prueba, one notch lighter than a full examen.

How the school vocabulary grows from A1 to C2

Across Vocabcord's Spanish corpus, the education theme runs to 54 phrases, and its character changes at every level. The 9 A1 words are the people and objects of an ordinary school day. The 24 A2 words above add the mechanics: assignments, results, dictionaries, and the verbs for revising, translating, and memorizing. B1 holds 9 entries and turns toward the language classroom specifically, with vocabulario (vocabulary), gramática (grammar), pronunciación (pronunciation), and graduarse (to graduate). By C2 the set is 13 entries of academic register: pedagogía (pedagogy), plan de estudios (curriculum), epistemología (epistemology), erudito (both erudite and, as a noun, polymath), and autodidacta (self-taught). No new classroom furniture appears past A2; everything above it describes how you learn, not where you sit.

Inside the corpus: trabajo three ways, and the subject that's only in an example

Grading a corpus by theme and level surfaces things a phrasebook usually hides, and two of them turn up in the school words.

Trabajo appears three separate times in the Spanish corpus, each with its own id and its own English gloss: as work in the A1 places theme (me voy al trabajo, I'm going to work), as job in the A1 work theme (un trabajo nuevo, a new job), and as assignment here in the A2 education theme (el profesor mandó un trabajo muy largo, the teacher set a very long assignment). One Spanish word, three corpus rows, three English words depending on which room you say it in.

And two school subjects show up in the corpus today, but only inside example sentences, not as vocabulary entries of their own. The A1 word clase (class) is illustrated with la clase de matemáticas es a las nueve (math class is at nine), and the A2 word asignatura (subject) is illustrated with la historia es mi asignatura favorita (history is my favorite subject). Matemáticas (math) and historia (history) are both real, correct Spanish, verified straight from those two sentences, but neither has its own audio yet: the subject names themselves are the gap in an otherwise graded classroom set. The corpus statistics page breaks down how all 33,233 phrases spread across languages and levels, and methodology covers how the grading and frequency ranking work.

Learn them without a study session

Twenty-four classroom words are easy to read once and lose by the following week, which is a strange fate for the one set of vocabulary that is actually built for studying. Vocabcord skips the study session and hangs the words on something that already happens daily: charge your phone and one Spanish phrase plays out loud, translation on screen, timed to come back right before it would have faded. Get Vocabcord on the App Store, pick Spanish, and the classroom words come back on their own between now and the next exam.

Common questions

How do you say school in Spanish?

Escuela. The classroom itself is el aula, a class or lesson period is la clase, and a university is la universidad, a separate word from escuela.

How do you say classroom in Spanish?

El aula. It is grammatically feminine even though it takes el instead of la in the singular (Spanish does this with feminine nouns that start with a stressed a), so el aula becomes las aulas in the plural.

How do you say homework in Spanish?

Los deberes, always used in the plural even for a single assignment: termina los deberes means finish your homework. A single assigned piece of work is un trabajo.

How do you say exam in Spanish?

El examen, plural los exámenes. The same word covers a formal exam and, at an easier level of the corpus, a simple test; a shorter, lower-stakes check is una prueba (quiz).

How do you say grades in Spanish?

Las notas. Sacó una buena nota means she got a good grade in American English or she got a good mark in British English; both describe the same Spanish sentence.

How do you say pass and fail in Spanish?

To pass is aprobar and to fail is suspender: espero aprobar el examen (I hope to pass the exam) against tenía miedo de suspender el examen (I was afraid of failing the exam).

Is revise the same as review in Spanish?

Yes, both point to the same Spanish verb, repasar. British English says revise for an exam and American English says review or study for an exam; tengo que repasar para el examen covers both.

How do you say math in Spanish?

Matemáticas. It is not yet its own entry in Vocabcord's shipping Spanish corpus, but it appears verbatim in the corpus's own example sentence for clase: la clase de matemáticas es a las nueve (math class is at nine).