Curriculum Meaning
/kəˈɹɪk.jʊ.ləm/Definition, CEFR level C1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
nounThe set of courses, coursework, and content offered at a school or university.
nounThe set of standards schools are required to teach all students.
Sentence Examples
That university's curriculum covers natural science and social science.
They have a very good curriculum at that university.
The school curriculum should be as broad as possible.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The school updated its math ____ to include coding lessons.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
That university's ____ covers natural science and social science.
Word Origin & History
Borrowed from Latin curriculum (“course”), derived from currō (“run, move quickly”). Doublet of curricle.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"Perhaps someday my old US history teacher, and men like him, will use The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression in their courses to balance the many explicitly pro–New Deal and prointerventionist texts and presentations that dominate public-school curricula today."
— 2009 November 25, Gennady Stolyarov II, “Murphy on the Great Confusion”, in Mises Institute:
"But as the effects of climate change have become more visible in recent years, and the breadth of the transformation needed to fight it has become clear, law schools, med schools, literature programs, economics departments and more are incorporating climate into their undergraduate curriculums, grappling with how climate will transform their fields and attempting to prepare students to face those transformations in the labor market."
— 2021 April 16, Ciara Nugent, “The Unexpected Ways Climate Change Is Reshaping College Education”, in Time, archived from the original on 22 Jul 2025:
"Bluebonnet Learning materials will be part of a menu of curriculums available for school districts to use. […] Staci Childs, a member of the board who voted against Bluebonnet, told CNN Friday that although the curriculum is optional, she expects most districts will adopt it given the “huge financial implications” of the incentive."
— 2024 November 22, Amanda Musa and Zoe Sottile, “Texas education officials approve optional school curriculum that incorporates Bible lessons. Some say it’s unconstitutional”, in CNN:
"Drawing on texts recommended in curricula and controlling for two countries with benchmarked curricula improves the external representativeness of the corpus."
— 2018, Clarence Green, James Lambert, “Advancing disciplinary literacy through English for academic purposes: Discipline-specific wordlists, collocations and word families for eight secondary subjects”, in Journal of English for Academic Purposes, volume 35, →DOI, page 108:
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CEFR Practice Quiz
The school updated its math ____ to include coding lessons.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
That university's ____ covers natural science and social science.