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web fishing
Joined: 02 Jun 2005
Posts: 95
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 Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2005 2:50 pm Post subject: How difficult is the CELTA |
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I plan to take the Celta at ECC.
I know it is an intensive course, but is it difficult?
Can I have a dictionary, grammar book... with me in the classroom?
Do you have to write 250+ word essays in class similar to the ones on the pre-interview test?
I am not an English major, however, I can identify grammatical errors, but to explain why X = Y sometimes I have to look it up in a grammar book.
What are your recommendations in preparing for the Celta?
Thanks |
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EnglishBrian
Joined: 19 May 2005
Posts: 189
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| Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2005 3:16 pm Post subject: |
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I don't think it's exactly difficult in the way you're worrying. It is unbelievably intensive though. I've lost count of how many universities I've studied at and courses I've done, but I know for sure that was the most 'stressful'.
Some people claim it's like a year course shoved into 4 weeks, and it did feel like that to me but if you're a native speaker with 'university level intelligence' and reasonable spelling that's enough for handling the technical side.
My experience was that they just give you so much to do in the time you've got, that people often start complaining to the course director that it's not fair or reasonable. Perhaps that's the point though. Sorts out the sheep from the goats. There will be nights on the course where you will not go to bed - or perhaps, literally, 1 or 2 hours.
Best preparation
- get plenty of sleep
- get really organised as much in advance as possible (buy glue, scissors, felt tips, coloured card etc.)
- get as much food shopping in as you can (a 30 minute visit to the supermarket each day adds up to a full working day over 4 weeks - you can't afford that) and stock up on quick easy cook meals.
- try to remove as many other responsibilities from yourself as possible for the duration (ask a friend to look after your dog)
- buy glucose drinks, vitamin tablets and caffeine pills.
Good luck. It'll be fun. |
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sheeba
Joined: 17 Jun 2004
Posts: 1123
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| Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2005 3:37 pm Post subject: |
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Teach Yourself: Teaching English" by David Riddell (Teach Yourself Books) ISBN: 0-340-78935-2
This new book by one of the best teachers and trainers around provides a very clear, simple and no-nonsense introduction to the practice of TEFL. It will be equally useful to those who are going to teach untrained and those who are planning to take a TEFL/TESL certificate course.
The above is a review of a book that saved my life whilst taking the CELTA.Buy it and start reading today !!! |
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Spinoza
Joined: 17 Oct 2004
Posts: 194
Location: Saudi Arabia
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| Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2005 4:04 pm Post subject: |
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Last edited by Spinoza on Fri Apr 27, 2012 9:05 am; edited 1 time in total |
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EnglishBrian
Joined: 19 May 2005
Posts: 189
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| Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2005 4:16 pm Post subject: |
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| Absolutely right. The CELTA is all about giving the tutors what they want - jumping through hoops! The quicker you learn this and manage to adopt that mindset the easier it'll be. The people I knew who had problems with the course were the ones who tried to fight it and argue their own point of view - doomed! |
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web fishing
Joined: 02 Jun 2005
Posts: 95
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| Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2005 6:05 pm Post subject: |
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Now I really have the jitters. 
Thank you very much everyone! I'm getting a very good idea what to expect and how I should prepare for the Celta.
750+ word essays, that is scary. I have been teaching ESL for four years [and I have been told I am pretty good], but the last time I was a student was over six years ago. They say "to teach is to learn twice", but I am feeling mighty rusty right now. I know it is just the jitters. I feel I have to get the A grade instead of the B or Pass; I know it doesn't matter as long as I don't fail.
Again, thanks everyone for the advice. It is helpful to me and I'm sure others. |
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matttheboy
Joined: 01 Jul 2003
Posts: 854
Location: Valparaiso, Chile
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| Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2005 6:28 pm Post subject: |
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It all depends on the person. There's a fair amount of work but it's not even vaguely difficult. Time consuming, maybe.
On my course there were some people who came in every single day looking knackered and stressed. Some of them even cried at least twice a week, saying that they'd been up all night preparing their classes and doing the assignments and that they were so tired they could barely stand blah blah blah blah blah. I wondered what the hell they were doing all that time as their lessons were no better than anyone else's and certainly hadn't warranted so much time and anxiety.
I did the course with a friend and neither her nor i did any work after 8pm. A few hours doing the coursework on 2 weekends, but other than that we had normal lives. We went out, drank and relaxed. Neither of us were remotely stressed for the entire course. My friend got a Pass B and I missed out on a B by 1 mark. Which didn't bother me at all as it makes almost no difference when looking for a job.
So basically, things aren't as tough as everyone makes out. I did a really, really well run course (they failed 3 people for not completing the work so they were certainly not just passing everyone regardless) in Sydney at International House and actually really enjoyed the month. I've never understood why people got so stressed and worried about tiny, insignificant details on lesson plans and other stuff. As has been said before, jump through the hoops, do exactly as the instructors tell you to, don't bother trying to think outside the box (as this is time consuming and pointless) and above all, relax and don't go completely mental.
Enjoy. |
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struelle
Joined: 16 May 2003
Posts: 2372
Location: Shanghai
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| Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2005 2:20 am Post subject: |
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Good points. Just to reiterate that the course is unbelievably intensive, but the way you manage your time makes all the difference.
Although I worked my butt off in the course at ECC, I always got a decent sleep (8 hours), plus relaxation time.
Two things I did to manage it: 1) followed the strategy of the tutors and took one day off a week (Sunday) to forget all about the course. I toured the city and cruised around the Chao Phraya 2) planned my lessons on the day I wasn't teaching.
The way it works is the most intense days are when you're doing input sessions (morning) and you have a lesson to teach in the afternoon. You have 3 lessons per week and usually they alternate, so you can do the planning on other days, as well as work on your assignments.
If you're behind on the assignments, a Sat morning helps to catch up
The toughest part of the course is Week 3 and you just have to slog it through, but if you plan ahead you can get through it.
Another useful trick for the assignment when you observe a full-time teacher: do this at the beginning of the course when the workload isn't so much.
Steve |
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ls650
Joined: 10 May 2003
Posts: 3484
Location: British Columbia
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| Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2005 3:12 am Post subject: |
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| IMHO the quality of material covered isn't particularly difficult; it's the quantity. You should expect to be extremely busy and have no social life for the length of the course. |
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Johanna
Joined: 10 May 2005
Posts: 19
Location: Adelaide, Australia
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| Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2005 4:47 am Post subject: |
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I would strongly recommend turning up on time on the first day. In my course one guy turned up half an hour late and he ended up dropping out by the end of the day.
The other person who dropped out was an experienced teacher who wasn't prepared to jump through the hoops that the tutors set up - she couldn't get her head around the idea that there were different contexts to teach in from the refugee camps she had been volunteering in - you can't teach the CELTA way if you don't have a textbook, a white board and a photocopier.
I would suggest that the best way to get through it is to allow yourself to be brainwashed while you are doing the course and then to start thinking for yourself later...please. |
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Chris_Crossley
Joined: 26 Jun 2004
Posts: 1797
Location: Still in the centre of Furnace City, PRC, after eight years!!!
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| Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2005 9:44 am Post subject: Have CELTA, but may have to do things their way, not my way |
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| Johanna wrote: |
You can't teach the CELTA way if you don't have a textbook, a white board and a photocopier.
I would suggest that the best way to get through it is to allow yourself to be brainwashed while you are doing the course and then to start thinking for yourself later...please. |
Even if armed with a CELTA (or, in my case, a Trinity College London Certificate in TESOL), you may have to be prepared to jump through the proverbial hoops of the management of the school that you may end up working for, no matter if you're a first-timer or whether you are a seasoned veteran.
At the Chinese primary school I taught at for a year, I did without a photocopier for the entire year (except for the two end-of-semester exams) and followed the approved way of teaching the Chinese children from their text-book (imported from the U.K., not a Chinese one, so there was no Chinese in it), which I didn't mind, since it seemed OK for everyone involved, teachers included.
Even though I had done all (or else pretty much all) of the things CELTA students do in my course, this does not necessarily mean that you will teach "the CELTA way" when you become a front-line "grunt" in the "real world" of teaching EFL. In China, most managers of private language schools don't give a hang for how you were instructed during your CELTA (or equivalent) course, they only care about how they want you to teach, unless perchance you are (unusually) given a completely free hand in what to teach your students. |
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struelle
Joined: 16 May 2003
Posts: 2372
Location: Shanghai
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| Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2005 5:42 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| I would suggest that the best way to get through it is to allow yourself to be brainwashed while you are doing the course and then to start thinking for yourself later...please. |
Please, you do see the logical fallacy of a using a phrase like 'allow yourself to be brainwashed', don't you? 
But on a general note, this is a good post. The more time I spend in Education, the more I encounter these kind of 'hoop jumping' situations; not just in CELTA. This is not exactly bad, as it helps develop the necessary skill of reconciling your own teaching style with the constraints you face in a given teaching environment.
One particular constraint, like it or not, is that you'll encounter authority figures who say, "We want it done this way", and are not very flexible about it.
Sometimes these authority figures contradict themselves totally, like my prof in a Math Education class I'm doing. She keeps telling us to 'put yourself in the students' shoes', be 'student centred' and 'challenge conventional wisdom'. But when she teaches us, she is condescending, authoritarian, and uses the same old boring lectures. As well, she constantly moves the goal posts on our group projects, while in class she tells us how important it is to be clear in your expecations if you assign Math problems to groups.
Having said all that, one useful trick is to deal with these authority figures as if you were the teacher (in actual fact, you ARE the teacher!). That is, assume these kind of people are like students in your class. If a student behaved like in the above case, how would you respond?
Sometimes it's best to learn from the 'students', that is, give them a chance.
Steve |
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Deconstructor
Joined: 30 Dec 2003
Posts: 775
Location: Montreal
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| Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2005 3:11 am Post subject: |
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You can cram even a BA into just a few months with 10 hour classes, but so what? Why not just go to the local U library and teach yourself? There are so many great books on EFL/ESL teaching.
CELTA is BS that is good for only overseas teaching or language school teaching back home for $12/hr. Every Tom, Dick, Harry and Marry has it. No wonder EFL is the laughing stock of the Anglophone world. |
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Chris_Crossley
Joined: 26 Jun 2004
Posts: 1797
Location: Still in the centre of Furnace City, PRC, after eight years!!!
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| Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2005 4:20 am Post subject: Don't knock the qualifications |
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You certainly have an axe to grind against even the worldwide recognised qualifications in the EFL world, Deconstructor. May I remind all fellow posters of what you said earlier this year:
| On April 15, 2005, Deconstructor wrote: |
I've always argued that the last thing that a teaching candidate must have in the world of TEFL is teaching qualifications. First, you'd better be from an Anglophone country; second, you'd better look like you're from an Anglophone country; third, you'd better sound like you're from an Anglophone country. In other words, the world, especially Asia, has a bizarre fetish when it comes to the West, and even more bizarre idea as to what it means to learn a foreign language. No wonder that 90% of them will never go past a low intermediate level in their lifetime.
The world of TEFL is one full of incompetent "teachers" and even more incompetent learners. What a joke overseas teaching really is! |
Considering your own experience in the Far East and Middle East, which you have shared with posters in the past, I believe that you must have become totally disillusioned with the idea of teaching overseas and have met some rather unsavoury characters who probably did not know the back end of their adverbs from their participles.
Yes, it is a sick joke when you find that so many people are actually allowed to teach English when they are unqualified and are of the backpacker mentality, but this is sometimes what happens when some private language schools are desperately short of teachers and so are happy to get anybody off the street and persuade them to "teach" in return for some time to booze themselves until they are completely hammered and then do something completely regrettable once they are.
If you have met such characters, then I can understand your anger. However, based on my own experiences at least, I strongly disagree with the idea that CELTAs and suchlike (I have the Trinity College Certificate in TESOL) are "only for every T, D and H", because they - especially if studied in full-time mode - require a great deal of dedication and work. Not everybody passes, I can tell you.
Your anger appears to be directed at the wrong thing. Qualifications themselves don't make people angry. People make other people angry. You might have come across people who have the CELTA or equivalent and might have patronised you: "I've got a CELTA and you haven't - so I know better than YOU!"
Yes, it is easy for someone with a CELTA (or equivalent) to be so nauseatingly condescending towards those who do not, but, as you have said in previous posts, you love teaching, and that is positive. (You're back in Montreal, I understand. Lovely city - I visited it in 1998.)
You have to let go of your excess baggage at some point. Let those with CELTAs or equivalent be as nauseating as they want. They don't get it that they are simply an introduction to classroom teaching for EFL - even people with CELTAs are not the best teachers by any means. I have had under-qualified people working where I used to work, and they mucked in and worked hard. Even now, I would hire them given the chance to work again in a school where general English is taught, CELTA or no, as they have proved themselves to be good teachers in my eyes.
Arrogance exists in every profession, and EFL (if it can be dignified with the word, "profession", that is) is no exception. Just don't let those A-holes get you down!  |
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Deconstructor
Joined: 30 Dec 2003
Posts: 775
Location: Montreal
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| Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2005 3:53 pm Post subject: |
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Hey Chris_Crossley, thanks for that trip down the memory lane. But please, no more psychoanalysis. I had forgotten that I had posted something so apt. In any case, As far as I'm concerned only education, even in CELTA--God, did I call CELTA education?--does not a teacher make. Great teachers are born; they are great communicators and understand what it means to actually learn something. If you are one of these, your talents are not entirely due to that piece of paper you have hanging from your wall.
What I don't understand, for the life of me, is why anyone would waste his/her hard earned money on something that is virtually worthless in all Anglophone countries. Don�t you think you�re gonna come back one day? Name a single credited educational institution that considers CELTA and the like as anything other than a toilet paper. Please note that this is not an insult on those who hold CELTA, but rather on the very nature of CELTA itself, on the very idea that you can become a teacher in a month. That is an insult on the very profession of teaching and degrades it to charlatanism. Now everyone can teach; in other words no one can teach. And isn�t this in fact the case anywhere in the EFL world today? |
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