QUALIFICATIONS vs. GRADES OR MARKS

Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Daily Vitamin. I hope you had a good weekend.

How would you translate the following sentence into Spanish?

"I want to offer him the job because he has excellent qualifications."

A) Quiero contratarle porque tiene excelentes calificaciones.
B) Quiero contratarle porque está muy cualificado.

The correct answer is (B).

In other words, the noun qualification does NOT mean "nota" o "calificación" in English, but rather the experience, education, professional background or other quality that someone needs in order to do a particular job or activity.

So how do we say "calificaciones" in English?

There are two options:
(i) Grades
(ii) Marks

Grades is more common in the US and Marks is more common in the UK.

Example 1
When I was a child, my parents got very angry when I received poor marks in school.

Example 2
She got a scholarship because she had such good grades.

Example 3
The doctor has very good qualifications. Some consider her to be one of the best in the world.

For more practice, I encourage you to come up with your own original sentences for one or more of these nouns. You can post your sentences on one of our social media sites (Facebook or Twitter) and we will give you feedback about your sentences as soon as possible.

Enjoy the rest of your day!