Job Discussion Forums

[FemaleNomad]

Hi -
I'm planning to head over to Barcelona to teach English this September (after I do the CELTA there in August). I've attended school - what feels like - for my ENTIRE life. From Kindergarten to university in New Jersey (USA). Somewhere along the line I must have learned all these grammar rules because I can obviously read, write and speak fluently. My problem is that it's been a long time since someone asked me to dissect a sentence or name the tense of a sentence or ask me to decipher between the subjunctive tense and a past participle or gerund. Should I be worried or will they not expect me to have all this memorized before I do the CELTA?

Any advice? Books I should get to brush up?

Thank you!!

[Moore]

I don't think anybody expects you to have memorized it ALL before your course. There are a couple of excellent books I would really recommend....

Collins English Grammar, ISBN: 0007196237, Harper Collins, which is a really cool pocket-sized grammar book which saved my life when I started teaching.

Grammar In Use: Intermediate, Murphy, Cambridge books, ISBN-10: 052162598X, basically the reference book on grammar, which you can use with a wide range of students, as well as for yourself to give you a decent overview of english grammar.

...hope this helps

[Jetgirly]

I did the CELTA at IH Barcelona and although it was really strong on teaching techniques there was almost no grammar instruction. We were each assigned a "grammar topic", spent TEN HOURS working in groups to create a presentation, then divided into a jigsaw groups to share what we'd learned. The topics were kind of random. My group had "word order for emphasis", another group had modals, a third group had questions and I don't recall what the fourth group had. If someone told you to present everything a teacher needs to know about "word order for emphasis", what would you do? Exactly.

In the end we BSed our way through the presentations and learned what we needed to know once we were on the job. I wouldn't stress out about grammar too much at this point in time, as you'll always have resources (grammar books, the internet, etc.) at your disposal should you have a question.

[FemaleNomad]

Thank you both for your insight. My phone "interview" is tomorrow so hopefully the guy thinks I'm smart enough to take the course.

[stoth1972]

I did my certTESOL eons ago in Barcelona w/ the now defunct "Next Training". Great tutors, for the most part. Two books they recommended at the time were Michael Swan/Catherine Walker's "How English Works" and Swan's "Practical English Usage". I used the latter as my grammatical Bible all these years and the former has excellent exercises that helped students (and me) get my head around grammatical points.

You'll certainly learn a lot about grammar in this course (and once you're teaching)...but it's not a requirement. If I recall correctly, they give you a bit of a quiz in the application. You'd have to do quite poorly to be refused based on that, though.