CELTA - ways to take it

4 years after my CELTA experience, I am adding to this blog.

First of all, I have to say my CELTA experience wasn't particularly positive. For example, all CELTA courses have to have a minimum of 120 contact hours. The course I attended had closer to 140, if not 150 as we were expected to stay from at least 9 to 5 every day. This was mainly because the school offered students free (reduced) lessons - i.e. the lessons the CELTA students taught - and told us they could only get students at certain times of day. In reality, they were trying to get these students to sign up to full-time courses, This led to an awful lot of wasted time, which could have been spent on preparation time. We also had to do a lot of observing our peers, then feeding back. Again, far too much time was spent on this as feedback lasted at most 20 minutes whereas we had to sit through around 3 hours plus of lessons each day. I had finished my teaching time by Tuesday of the last week but still had to sit through other students' lessons for two days. It would have been far better to timetable us so that we were staggered in giving feedback rather than a 'round robin' approach.

Some of the tasks of the last week were gap-fillers and very questionable. One session we had to write down everything we liked and appreciated about our fellow students, and  decorate our paper so that they would have a positive memory to take away with them. Really?! I am not at primary school and this really wasn't appropriate. It was a time-waster as they needed to keep us there so that lessons would take place in the afternoons. Another questionable task was writing a letter of thanks to the teachers who we had to observe as part of our course. As I professional, I thanked those teachers on leaving their classrooms. I also have been observed many, many times at the request of management. It's part of teaching life and you do this because your line-manager tells you. It is not usually as a 'favour'. As this CELTA school is OBLIGED to provide staff for us to observe, and as we had paid MONEY to take part in the course, I am not sure a handwritten note of thanks was at all appropriate. 

Long story short: check the number of contact hours you will be doing BEFORE you part with your cash and ask for a typical timetable.  If it's way over 120, avoid, as they do not have your interests at heart.

I don't know anything about the on-line version of CELTA, but I have to say it looks much improved. 6 hours of teaching in 8 sessions looks good. One would hope that would also mean they would be able to stick to the required hours 'virtually' as the are not tied to classrooms. Perhaps!
On-line CELTA info is here

Interestingly, my course centre doesn't offer it - no doubt because they will lose their free student teacher time, and might actually have to pay teachers!

CELTA preparation

Right: decision had been made, course was accepted, deposit paid.
Next I was bombarded with materials. And I mean bombarded. Most of it was completely unnecessary.

First I was advised to purchase the following:
Learning Teaching (ISBN 1405013990), Jim Scrivener (Heinemann) 

Practical English Usage (ISBN 0194420981), Michael Swan (Oxford University Press) 

A Concise Grammar for English Language Teachers (ISBN 0953132315), Tony Preston (TP Publications) 

Then I was sent four more teaching methodology 'booklets' - about 50 pages each.

Then the CELTA pre-course task which contained another list of books.

You may find one of the following grammar books useful for reference:

Aitken, R - Teaching Tenses (Nelson)

Bolitho, R & Tomlinson, B – Discover English – 2nd edition (Macmillan)

Leech, Cruickshank & Ivanič – An A-Z of English Grammar & Usage (Longman)

Murphy, R – English Grammar in Use (CUP)

Parrott, M – Grammar for English Teachers (CUP)

Swan, M – Practical English Usage (OUP)

Swan, M & Walter, C – How English Works (OUP)

Thornbury, S – How to Teach Grammar (Longman)

If you want to do some additional reading:

Gower, Walters & Philips – Teaching Practice Handbook – 2nd edition (Macmillan)

Harmer, J. – How to Teach English – 3rd edition (Longman)

Kenworthy, J – Teaching English Pronunciation (Longman)

Lewis, M & Hill, J – Practical Techniques for Language Teaching (LTP)

Riddell, D - Teaching English as a Foreign/Second Language (Teach Yourself) (Hodder Arnold H&S)

Scrivener J – Learning Teaching (Macmillan)

My short- cuts? 

The books

Firstly, the only book from this list I purchased was Raymond Murphy, but to be honest I didn't really use it on the course, but have used it in normal lessons.

I searched on-line and found free pdf versions of many of the others, but these were the only ones I used:

Practical English Usage (Swan)

A Concise Grammar... (Preston)

Teaching Tenses (Aitken)

How to teach English (Harmer)

How English Works (Swan) - I had this copy already but found a pdf version to save on luggage weight.

You could probably get away with just first one, but you are supposed to refer to others in various assignments. If you are organised enough, you can probably just borrow a book and find a suitable quote.

I bothered to read the shorter texts, but it was a waste of time. 

I purchased a Kindle which was a great investment as, once the pdfs were downloaded, I could work on the trip to and from school.

The pre-course task

The pre-course task is here. The answer key is here

The point of this was not really explained to us. Basically, it covers just about everything on the course. What you need to do, is work your way though it, with a reference book to hand. DO NOT SPEND TOO LONG ON SECTIONS ONE OR FIVE! These are subjective and question 50 has no answer. It DOES go into you final folder (though one tutor on my course said it wouldn't) so needs to be readable :)  Do it in several sessions otherwise it will send you to sleep. Look up what you need to and write your answers. I typed mine but as a short cut would not spend long typing out questions as once you have finished, you get to mark it with the key, the idea being by the end of it you have done quite a bit of reading and most of it serves as a useful reference document. It also shows you which bits you don't know so which bits you need to read more carefully! Once you have marked it, we had to submit it so the tutors could check that we had marked it correctly.

That's it: I would not waste any other time reading as it did not have much bearing on anything we were 'taught' on the course.

CELTA - the interview

Application forms in, interviews were arranged. Let's face it, CELTA centres want your cash so it's hard to fail this interview. That said, they also want you to pass the course as it reflects badly on them if you fail plus of course you could start asking difficult questions after parting with a large chunk of dosh.

So, I had two interviews and actually made my decision about which offer to accept based on this. There are no CELTA courses in my now 'home' country so I couldn't attend a face-to-face interview. The first centre was extremely accommodating, offering me different dates and times when I could call. The second was extremely difficult, offering me one day and one time. As I work full-time, and this qualification isn't necessary for my job, my employers were not too happy about a) finding me cover for an hour so that b) I could make an international phone call from the office lasting for an hour. I was a bit sceptical then when the second centre refused to be flexible in offering times, especially as they day started later then mine!

Back to the interviews. They were very different, but for both a pen and paper to hand were essential and I also needed a crib sheet in front of me with tenses and basic grammar constructions. The first one was supposed to last an hour, but I think it ended up being about 35 minutes and, it has to be said, most of that was the interviewer giving advice on the course. It consisted of a lot of basic questions on tenses and parts of speech. If you wanted to be really prepared you could look at the pre-course task here BUT don't look at any answer keys - the idea of this is to do some revision before you start the course and it's a bit pointless to just go ahead and read the answers without understanding them. More of that later. A quick look through any basic grammar book should be fine. Some of it was on vocabulary and how to explain it, which you can't really read up on anyway.
I should add here that I have teaching experience. The candidates who did not have teaching experience were asked how they would teach something - whether a face to face interview was compulsory, I don't know. I should also add that I know of someone who did this course who does not have English as a first language and, despite making a lot of mistakes, still managed to pass.

Centre number two was a whole different experience. Comical in fact. I was granted a phone interview only as my teaching was so strong... clearly, they weren't used to doing this and the fact that they really weren't geared up to international students put me off. The interview itself consisted of having to write down sentences then explain how I would show/draw/mime different vocabulary. I explained I would mime it very well...! I was even told at one point to turn over card B. Tricky, as no cards were before me. I was even told that the interviewer was imagining what what I was doing with my hands to explain a word. I said she was imagining correctly!!

So.... no stress, it's not difficult to pass. Remember, they want your cash!

CELTA - the application process

So, you have found a possible centre, it has places available for the dates you want, what next?
I applied to a couple of centres and found each very different in their application process.
Both required a lengthy application form that needed to be emailed/faxed, before an interview date could be set.
One mainly focused on grammar and knowledge of language.
The other I found to be extremely questionable, as it asked a lot of questions about culture shock when arriving in England and suggested that all African women would find leaning English difficult!
For both, I needed to use some reference materials to check my grammar.
I used this site for tenses. Googling for language functions on the net was not so successful. There are a few a pointers here but I mainly relied on Michael Swan's How English Works.  I should say at this point, all the texts can be found on-line in pdf format, if you have the patience to look and can get used to searching in them.


So application forms in, next: the interviews.

CELTA: choosing where

So, after surviving the CELTA course, here are my top tips for all you CELTA-to-bes.


Do your homework.
No, I'm not talking about pointless lesson plans, I'm talking about the centre you choose. Remember: you are the paying customer and whilst CELTA is supposed to be a standardised course, a quick bit of research shows that centres vary wildly.
Firstly, locate a centre that interests you. All centres are listed here: celta centres

I was advised to find a centre close to where I lived, so that I wouldn't be wondering about where to eat, where to stay etc. There may be some logic to that, but I really think other factors should be considered too.

The cost is the first one. I went for a course that was almost double the price than that of a friend's. I mistakenly thought that would mean the overall instruction would be better, but on reflection I don't think this was the case at all. My friend managed to have a month abroad and still spent less on his course and accommodation combined than I did on the course alone. Plus he was given help finding accommodation and as it was close to his centre of choice his travelling time was reduced too.

Commuting time  is a must to consider. There is homework, so spending more than an hour travelling each way is a bit tiring. Unless you can put the time to good use of course!

Reviews  - yes, I know views vary widely but if I had googled a little bit more, I probably would have chosen somewhere else, or at least been a little more aware of the lack of resources I was about to face! A few reviews are here but of course it's best if you google the centre you are interested in.

Dates  I'm lucky enough to be a full-time teacher, so this one was important to me - it's only during August I have the full 4 weeks free that are needed to take a CELTA course. Quite a few centres don't run courses in the summer, so you need to look around.

UPDATE: make sure you ask for a typical daily/weekly timetable. Course are supposed to be a minimum of 120 hours contact time. My course ended up being closer to 150 hours, with the same assignment requirements. This was mainly due to time-wasting. If they are considerably over 120 hours avoid - they don't have your interests at heart and are likely just using your English skills for free!