Should I major in psychology at university?
This is the first of two chapters about English for Psychology. To complete this reader, read each chapter carefully and then unlock and complete our materials to check your understanding.
– Discuss the benefits of studying Psychology
– Highlight some of the key topics which are likely to be discussed during an undergraduate degree in Psychology
– Provide examples of the most common career paths available to Psychology graduates
Before you begin reading...
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video and audio texts
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knowledge checks and quizzes
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skills practices, tasks and assignments
Chapter 1
Deciding what to study at university is never easy, and some majors are clearly better suited to a student’s skills and interests than others. Yet this an important decision – one that can affect you for the rest of your life. Thankfully, for most the choice is easy: the major is decided by the grades achieved or the classes studied in high school or college. For some subjects though, there may not have been much opportunity to explore the field and its key topics and terms until arriving at the university campus.
Whatever your situation is, studying Psychology at an English-medium university (particularly if English is not your native language) can be quite demanding. To help you familiarise yourself with this subject, we discuss some of the key topics of this major in Chapter 1, introducing in Chapter 2 the 100 most frequent and useful subject-specific vocabulary items in English for Psychology.
What is Psychology?
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behaviour. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between the natural and social sciences. In short, psychology broadly combines aspects of other majors, inluding biology, education, linguistics, neuroscience and sociology. It’s a truly fascinating subject that forms an integral part of understanding human behaviour, mental health and social interactions, with topics such as:
- addiction and abuse
- attraction and romance
- antisocial behaviour and criminality
- depression and disorders
- dreams and sleep
- language acquisition
- learning disabilities
- mental health
- phobias
- perception and persuasion
- prejudice and discrimination
- speech disorders
- the unconscious mind
Which students suit Psychology?
Students who are interested in human behaviour and mental processes would make for an obvious choice for this major, particularly those who find the idea of helping people with their emotions and mental health appealing or rewarding. A knowledge of linguistics, biology or sociology may also prove useful, with Psychology crossing into those fields too, as would open-mindedness, critical thinking, problem solving and effective communication abilities. Ultimately, as long as you find the human mind fascinating and wish to know more about why people behave how they do, then Psychology might very well be the major for you.
What opportunities are there for psychology students?
As majors go, psychology has many transferable skills, making a student of this major very employable in a number of sectors – not only as a psychologist. While the skills honed might lead students of this subject down a variety of interesting paths, some of the most popular and directly relevant careers for psychology majors are:
- childcare supervisor
- counsellor
- education consultant
- human resource manager
- life coach
- market researcher
- neurologist
- rehabilitation specialist
- professor
- psychologist
- psychotherapist
- social worker
Does Psychology have special vocabulary?
Yes – as with most majors, being successful at Psychology requires learning lots of subject-specific vocabulary (also known as ‘jargon’ or ‘terminology’). If you can understand most of the following sentence and its fourteen psychology-specific words, then you’re well on your way to understanding the concepts of this major:
By treating his addiction with hypnosis and psychotherapy, the patient was able to better deal with the delusions, compulsions, habits, neuroses, phobias and anxieties that made him a generally stressed and introverted hypochondriac and which contributed to his (often unconscious) panic disorder.
If you don’t understand much (or any!) of this vocabulary, then don’t worry at this stage. While non-native speakers of English may find the vocabulary of Psychology particularly tough at first, there’s a lot to learn for everyone – native or not. To further complicate things, you may very well discover that some of the vocabulary you already know needs to be learned again as those same words carry different meanings when used within your major – this is what makes those terms ‘subject specific’. So long as you’re prepared for and expect that, however, you should be on the path to success. To ensure this, try referring to dictionaries with frequency, keeping a vocabulary journal, expanding and refining your vocabulary diligently, and reading lots of sources related to your field. Do those things on a daily basis and you’ll soon pick up the language used by psychologists in academic contexts.
To help you with learning Psychology’s subject-specific vocabulary, Chapter 2 of this short reader on English for Psychology provides one hundred of the most useful (and frequently used) words in the field. Remember also to unlock, download and complete our related worksheets to check your understanding of this reader.
To reference this reader:
Academic Marker (2022) English for Psychology. Available at: https://academicmarker.com/academic-guidance/vocabulary/subject-specific-vocabulary/English-for-psychology/ (Accessed: Date Month Year).
Downloadables
Once you’ve completed both chapters in this short reader about English for Psychology, you might then wish to download our Chapter Worksheets to check your progress or print for your students. These professional PDF worksheets can be easily accessed for only a few Academic Marks.
Chapter 1 explores the topic: Should I major in psychology at university? Our Chapter 1 Worksheet (containing guidance, activities and answer keys) can be accessed here at the click of a button.
Chapter 2 explores the topic: What are the top 100 English psychology words? Our Chapter 2 Worksheet (containing guidance, activities and answer keys) can be accessed here at the click of a button.
To save yourself 1 Marks, click on the button below to gain unlimited access to all of our English for Psychology Chapter Worksheets. This All-in-1 Pack includes every chapter, activity and answer key related to this topic in one handy and professional PDF.
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