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[N'Nuther Brick]

It's taken me quite some time to write this but after repeated contacts from other previous class members this needs to be added into the lexicon on teaching in Vietnam and indeed Southeast Asia.

Watch out for the CELTA class offered at ILA in Vietnam. I and a number of other students attended the course last year and no fewer than three of us felt it was more of an excercise in doctrine and local staff political correctness than it was any type of professional training course.

For it's name, CELTA, means Cambridge English Language Training (for) Adults but should you attend the course in Vietnam you can be guaranteed to be treated like, and offered in the end, to teach children.

Without any undue offense to those who have never taught before, this might be fine if your straight off the boat and don't have a college degree.
But to anyone who's accomplished any degree of study or experience please think again.

Quite simply, look at the countries who will only accept a minimum of a bachelors degree to teach anything at all. And go there.

Yeah, yeah, I know, I know...the seasoned language educators are now welling up in arms at the back of the room saying that a guy with a degree in biology has no business teaching English in any country...and to them I say this:

A person with a degree in anything has more business teaching whatever to whomever because they've spent at least four years of study learning how to plan, study, organize, test and deal socially with a rather complex organization to produce visable results.

Sorry kids, but that just can't happen in a six week bootcamp for plumbing, let alone language aquisition.

Want a reality check? Ask any CELTA operation around the world for their staff's credentials and you'll be surprised. You may see all sorts of CELTA, DELTA & SCHMELTA certificates but look very carefully for those real degrees. Anyone with or without a degree would certainly want their trainer to have one before ponying up the fee for the course.

In all fairness, the fee in Vietnam is reasonably less than that in Thailand or Taiwan. But discounts apparantly come at a price.

The course in Vietnam was all of the hoopla you hear about CELTA anywhere on the globe. Were gonna bust yer ass! We're gonna drill you into lean mean teaching machines! Yadda yadda yadda.

But, oh my God I wished it had been about education! Or student interaction, or success at conveying the material. Sadly it was not.

In the end it seemed to be an ass-kissing excercise that had two much larger posteriors than anyone might like to encounter at the helm of the ship. Ouch! That was rude wasn't it? No, actually it wasn't. One trainer was abusive to a trainee one day on a matter of physical appearance and I had to pinch myself to check if that trainer had recently been in the presense of a mirror. Nuff said.

The course progressed through what many people might consider gruelling schedules and imposing deadlines but to me and others that was not any issue. The issues arose when trying to interact with our trainers. At one point we were told not to take notes. The scratching of pens and papers bothered one presenter. Hmmm. At another point I was essentially disallowed from writing my own class plan in favor of one written by my trainer. Not something you really want to deliver the next day to the writer. There was rudeness, childishness and an odd surealism to the proceedings. After being incredibly precise about our presentations never going over the alloted 40 minutes one trainer managed to steer 90 minutes into his own diatribe before realizing he was 90 minutes over the scheduled module. Shoot, we all had to pee but were very, very polite! ...considering...

At more and more points during our academic incarceration we were essentially told not to be ourselves. If you're good for soldier work, then this program is for you, but interestingly enough I found I was not alone in my objections.

Over the period of the course the other trainees were given certificates.

I was not. I left the course after a few weeks understanding that no amount of brainwashing could possibly be good for my growth intellectually or professionally... Not even if Cambridge University said it was.

In the end two of the "graduates" were awarded pass "A"s. More, pass "B"s and a couple just "passes".

Read all the jargon in the Cambridge introduction to the CELTA course and they'll go on about how "just passing: is like getting an actual degree from Cambridge and how only 2% get pass "A"s and 4% get pass "B"s. In our class the pass "A"s were over 20% and "B"s even higher. Maybe it was to make up for the guy (me) who walked. Who knows, but with such a high percentage of pass A & B students it really put the other foks in the dirt.

In the end the CELTA course in Vietnam became nothing more than a thinly veiled recruiting tool for ILA, the representative school here. The two pass "A" students "passed" on taking any job at ILA and went on to better opportunities and the ones who only "passed" were offered low paying jobs teaching children. Hmmm. That was an "adult" course, right?

In any case, the English "training" business in Vietnam is a wonderful opportunity for training companies to make money but doesn't seem like good value for the money. The vagaries of the seperate programs in each country make you want to really take a look. And take a break.

What looks like a CELTA in Vietnam may only be a way to pay the salary of one trainer who might find it hard to gain employment otherwise.

In summary, the CELTA course in Vietnam was flatly unprofessional, in any true educational sense. Be aware.

[supervisor133]

[N'Nuther Brick]

Your comments are well taken. Do take a look at the other CELTA post on this Vietnam forum. It gives a pretty good run down on the "recruitment" benefits of the course to the hosting institution and is concurrent with my comments.

[Snaff]