What is the difference between accomplishments and achievements

English Language Learners Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for speakers of other languages learning English. It only takes a minute to sign up. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. It seems that in my native language is used only one word for translating both words "accomplishment" and "achievement".

Are they synonyms? Are there some difference in usage of these words? The content of this answer was taken from Translation Directory.

Accomplishment also involve change, but they present the events they refer to as bounded in time. They can be decomposed into two endpoints the beginning and the culmination of the event and a process part. Examples of accomplishment are "build a house", "run to the store". Accomplishments can occur in the progressive. They do not occur with time-span adverbials, but do occur with time-frame adverbials. Achievement are like accomplishments lacking a process part.

They denote punctual change. Examples of achievement predicates are "reach the top", "win the race", "find his glasses". I heard an interesting point of view recently regarding this. An achievement is the actual result usually gained against an external or standardised measurement. It doesn't imply success necessarily.

An accomplishment is often the acceptance of a goal as being completed successfully. As an example a student may have achieved an 'F' for an exam.

This is a measurable assessment based on the results of sitting the exam. However if the student was aiming to get an 'A' then she may not have accomplished her actual goal. If she achieved that 'A' grade then both the accomplishment and achievement would be aligned. If her goal was to just achieve an 'F' then that would be her accomplishment. Let's take the example of athletes. When one completes a race without any cheating, like use of drugs, one has really achieved.

When, however, one uses drugs, one has only accomplished the task of completing the race, without achieving anything apart from managing to use drugs in the race. I learnt this from a debate I followed on BBC Television some two or three years back, about whether drugs should be allowed in sports or not. I can't exactly recall the program, but the above difference was given by one of the discussants against use of drugs in sports.

An achievement is a goal that has been reached. An accomplishment is an initiative, task, project, job, etc. Achievement examples:. John achieved a promotion to the level of a General Manager. Accomplishment examples :. The Symphony project accomplished a major process change without business disruption.

The team accomplished the restoration of services, in a major outage, by working all night. Delivering the data migration phase of the project within 4 weeks is a major accomplishment by David. What are the differences? Achievement can be relative. An achievement in one environment or context may not seem as remarkable in another environment.

A Salesperson may be able to achieve great results in one organization but fail to sell anything in another. A Project Manager may achieve great results with one team but fail with another.

Accomplishments tend be consistent and universal across environments. The degree of an accomplishment may vary, however benefit to others is still valid and valuable. The key is to create an educational environment that balances goals centred on achievement and accomplishment.

Education has a large emphasis on achievement as it is. It is more how accomplishment can be integrated into that. Encouraging students to look at how they can action what they learn is a good building block to balance achievement and accomplishment.

For instance, a student can work to get high results on a maths test and then be encouraged to investigate a occupation that uses the maths they have just studied in a positive manner to the world i. This adds weight to what students are learning and shows them a real life example of people turning achievement into accomplishment. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly.

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The difference The distinction lies within the parties involved within a task or goals success. What can we do?