Learn English – A teacher at a university is still teacher or lecturer

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A teacher at a university is still teacher or lecturer?

I'm a little bit confused in light of two different sources

The 1st source – (the book "Check Your English Vocabulary For Living In UK") says the following things:

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But on the other hand, Oxford dictionary states:

So we can see that teacher at university is still teacher, unlike what the first source says. I must to say, that some universities that I know the lecture is the one who gives the lecture in a big hall for many classes of students while a teacher is the one who responsible for examination or practical part and he works with each class separately unlike the lecturer. In your countries do you have also such distinguishing?

Best Answer

Teacher: a person who teaches or instructs, especially as a profession; instructor.

Lecturer: a person who lectures; an academic rank given in colleges and universities to a teacher ranking below assistant professor.

Professor: a teacher of the highest academic rank in a college or university, who has been awarded the title Professor in a particular branch of learning; a full professor; any teacher who has the rank of professor, associate professor, or assistant professor.

All from dictionary.com

You may look up associate professor and assistant professor on your own.

First of all - you can call anyone who teaches a teacher (or maybe an instructor). Most of the other teaching professions (professor, lecturer, etc.) are subsets of teacher.

It appears there are two different conflicting sets of definitions here, which will determine the answer to your question. The first is in casual English. In casual English, you usually call someone by what they do. If they teach in primary schools, you usually call them just a teacher (or maybe a high school teacher, if applicable). If they teach college (by the way: college means in AmE what university means in some other regions) they are usually called a professor. If they give a lot of lectures, they may also be a lecturer.

The other system is academics. I have little to no knowledge of academic rankings. However, from the above definitions, it appears that colleges have a tiered ranking system that lecturer and professor both fit in. Thus, the same words mean different things in different contexts.

Too Long; Didn't Read: (For outside of academia): If they teach you, you can call them a teacher. If they lecture you, you can call them a lecturer. If you are in college (university), you can call them a professor.

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