Job Discussion Forums

[fluffyhamster]

Maybe I'd been going for the "wrong" sort of jobs all along, but the CELTA (or rather, CTEFLA as it was then called) never added much to my pay (i.e. non-CELTA qualified colleagues earnt exactly the same), and a certificate-level qualification hasn't ever qualified and wouldn't ever qualify one to do much anyway (perhaps because it arguably indeed doesn't actually qualify/help one to do much!); it might be better to save the shekels for an MA (entry to which is usually dependent on having teaching experience and a reasonable class or sort of first degree than any "initial" ELT/TESL/TEFL qualification). Then again, perhaps it was my having a certificate that made some employers (or rather, the less exploitative ones at least LOL) more willing to "take a chance" and hire me, and there must be increased competition for any sort of job (especially ELT/TEFL ones, given the downturn in the US, more economic migrants etc) nowadays, which makes it hard for me to say that "in hindsight" I'd not (have) bother(ed) with a cert (I mean, I still AM an EFL teacher!). So I sort of sway between thinking that a CELTA or equivalent is the least one could/should do before charging customers money, and on the other hand thinking that one can prepare just as well from books and independent study (because let's face it, how many people need an observed practicum to find out if they are totally unsuited to teaching? And wouldn't it be the purpose of training to make one more suited/suitable? etc).

[caustic yeti]

haha


i understand my cert is sub-par in europe,
but what about korea, thailand, or latin america?
i really do want to be an effective and competent teacher.
if i decide to stick with it for more than a couple years,
a better cert. would be ideal.

[fluffyhamster]

I suppose the keyword when it comes to certificates is equivalence, 'or equivalent', but that assumes of course that 'more is more', that the extra time spent in some Cambridge "intensive" bootcamp or wherever is actually time well spent and not just so much padding, hand-waving and nose-wiping. To be totally honest, I don't think any of these month-long courses prepare one to be a truly effective and competent teacher (and I have my suspicions about a lot of the more academic higher-level quaqlifications too). What "prepares" you is realizing that some people are depending on you to make money for them whilst investing almost nothing in return beyond your pay (and sometimes even that can be in doubt!), and others on you to actually educate them more efficiently than they could themselves, and all despite your relative incompetence at that moment in time. What to do? Educate yourself and in the process develop better teaching methods, perhaps with a view to one day selling your secrets somehow (by becoming self-employed, or authoring a textbook or materials, or...or you could just end up a well-respected and valued teacher (it does sometimes happen!)). Sorry, I was just day-dreaming to myself again there!

Thought of this for the OP and anyone else who's wondering whether to invest in a certificate:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?t=56825 (a thread that I began entitled, 'Did you WANT to complete a CELTA/TEFL certificate?'. Note I phrased it as 'complete', not 'start' or 'stump up for' - I felt like "we" were hardly learning anything (during daylight class/course time) and just twiddling our thumbs and going through the PPP bare-minimum/"maximum" motions during the course I did. In a few words, it was boring, baby-lockstep patronizing drivel ).

[Littlebird]

What I don't understand is what do one actually do on a CELTA course ? Do you learn much grammar ? I hope so because that is abviously worthwhile and I find it very interesting. Why is it considered so hard ? I have looked into a local course and am daunted and intimidated by the attitude of the admissions staff and their selection process. It is actually quite hard to get on the course.

It would seem to me that you learn from doing.

SAM

[fluffyhamster]

[Littlebird]

Thanks Fluffyhamster

What I am really worried about is how they assess you. Do you do written essay type homework ? Is it question and answer work ? Do they ask you to make games like crosswords and cards ? Is there a lot of typing ? I am crap and rather hung up about essay writing. I am also the world's most anxious and procrastinating student. I am good at grammar, spelling and know a thing or two about apostrophes but my ability to write a good essay is poor. Lord knows there are loads of people on this TEACHING ENGLISH FORUM whose spelling and punctuation is diabolical. I find it hard to believe that someone has employed them as teachers. I wouldn't.

Thanks for you help.

SAM

[nickpellatt]

In addition to the above post about how much they do teach you, how much do you expect? its a one month course, with a lot of focus on teaching practice and observing teaching. So bearing that in mind there isnt a lot of time left for very intensive grammar study. I would suggest that teaching is more than just being a grammatical expert anyway, so if you did find yourself on a course where they did nothing but teach you grammar....well, that would be the course to complain about.

As I have written here already in other posts...I really enjoyed my course, and I wish I had taken it earlier, it isnt the Holy Grail, and it wont give you all the answers, but the amount I feel my peers and I picked up made it worthwhile.

What do they teach you?

I would say...in no specific order.....a chance to teach with corrective feedback. A chance to observe others teach (thats really valuable IMO, and I had a lot of that), you learn a little grammar, but more importantly, how to use resources to research it prior to class, You learn how to plan lessons and use material, you should find you language awareness increasing, and familiarity with things like phenomes should improve. You will also pick up some games, activities and tips that you can road test on the course, and use in your future teaching career.

Then, depending upon where you took the course, how you approach it, and what you wanted from it.....you may find a job, a better job, make some good friends, make some contacts, and have fun.

There is some writing required.....there were a number of assignments that required a lot of writing...for me that was an assignment on language awareness....(3rd and 2nd conditionals) and also a 1-1 teaching assignment that needing writing up with a learner evaluation and recommendation for study etc.

Other writing included shortish reports on your own teaching practice, and also some short report writing about teaching practice you observed. Some of my peers found that hard going....

Teaching practice was the carried the biggest % of marks when they were assessing you tho. And I think the grade was based on the teacher you 'grew' into during the course rather than the one you started at.

Hope that helps.

[fluffyhamster]

Hi again Littlebird! Like I said, I did the CTEFLA, not a CELTA, but from what Nick and others say, the assignments and means of assessment appear to have remained pretty similar. I don't recall writing/having to write long essays, but the pre-interview, and then pre-course sets of questions and tasks required a fair bit of work (the pre-course involved more or less reading and summarizing at least what the set text - Harmer's Practice of ELT - said and recommended), and during the course I recalled there being at least a dozen or so assignments covering (like Nick says) language awareness and specific learner/nationality difficulties in learning English, teaching each of the four skills, articulatory phonetics and English phonology (involving the use of some of the IPA), textbook evaluation, activity design, teaching young learners etc (I'd need to dig out my notes). The main focus was on language awareness and analysis, and some of the other stuff got really only a cursory mention and limited treatment.

Then of course there was the actual TP (teaching practice), which IIRC was mainly assigned to you, although sometimes it might have been left to us trainees to decide amongst ourselves who was teaching what exactly. This TP would range from being quite tightly constrained (for e.g. covering receptive skills textbook passages and activities), to you being expected to come up with some original ideas for e.g. each of the three stages in the PPP paradigm (teacher Presents/contextualizes some language point/grammar structure, then conducts students through controlled Practice e.g. by use of various drills or worksheets, then students Produce at least that type of structure if not more, in a less controlled or constrained, more free and supposedly communicative activity). But one wasn't expected to be so original in preparation and execution as to be always designing new and perhaps too experimental stuff and in the process losing too much sleep over it - often just a judicious selection from among the available published stuff would do.* Obviously most of the TP preparation has to be done outside of course hours.

But it's not all hard work - sometimes you get to sit back and see the trainers strutting their stuff (hopefully like the old pros they should be), or take lessons in Swahili or something to see what it's like to struggle with the Direct Method (but this time as a student rather than as a teacher LOL).

*Then again, for some language points, this 'It's not what you've got, but how you use it' philosophy is plainly insufficient, because often there isn't actually much decent stuff out there to use! Which makes it a bit difficult to have truly successful teaching/learning taking place. For example, compare what's usually considered sufficient to teach not only the structure (easy enough) but also the function of question tags (and other items that overlap functionally, not that they usually get much of a look-in either!) in most textbooks, then compare that with what one could probably do with reading - at least something on discourse like Tsui's English Conversation, if not several chapters in the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language...but you'd be lucky if trainers pointed you in the direction of even Michael Lewis's stuff. It would perhaps be best if these tricky areas like tags weren't expected to be done in CELTA-level TP at least, given the time constraints operating there. Just saying that I think a lot of what makes a good teacher DOES stem from knowing your grammatical onions, because although it can make your eyes water, it can help you cook up something nutritious and even appetizing for students (I really believe that looking at and thinking about language data and description, then more language data and description, can really help one develop activities - natural language contains many seeds, much food for thought, and practice/methodology divorced from theory/theorizing is ultimately just so much empty language-like behaviour rather than anything at an actual minimum cerebral level, a bit like putting an empty rickety cart before a tired old horse. But there are some areas e.g. conditionals where I think the shrieks of the more linguistically-minded that 'There are more than three or four patterns of conditional!' are missing the point that those select few patterns are quite common and useful functional patterns in the main and provide a start (I say all this because I might've appeared to be giving Nick a bit of a hard time on a "Swan-inspired" discussion a while ago! We soon hugged and made up though )).

[Littlebird]

Thanks a lot Fluffy Hamster and Nick

I can tell you are both very enthused on the subject, that is an underestimation - passionate ! So I may have to summarise on the pre-course selection task. Well that is better than writing prose. Can you retake assignments you don't pass ? I am told that taking the course 2 days a week for 3 months is not part time apparently because you need to do 20 hours extra work and attend college outside those 2 days to do TP and observation. How the hell is anyone supposed to take 3 months off work ? I earn pants and need every penny I can get. I would have to go without an income for 3 months and pay �1100 for a CELTA course ! This is why I am considering doing ONTESOL which is online and includes observation you have a video and practicuum they arrange it off line obviously. This course looks very intensive and difficult but no-one will tell me if it is credible or not. I want to go to Japan, Spain or France with my certification. TESOL good enough ? what I am worrying about is that I get a TESOL and then a year down the line it becomes imperative that I should have got the CELTA to be taken seriously.

Thanks a lot for your help.

[spiral78]

If it's not a face-to-face course, it won't be considered credible in Europe. Why not take a one-month intensive in Spain or France?

I assume that you are from the UK - if you're not, you can't work legally in Spain or France anyway and should focus your attentions in other regions.

[fluffyhamster]

Something about retaking assignments (possible, apparently - I wouldn't know, as I've never had to retake anything, ever! ): http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?t=65292

Ontesol looks good (Chancellor for one has mentioned it several times on Dave's), but I'd Google up some actual Trinity links and make 100% sure that they are accredited/recognized by Trinity (I've done this for people asking about CELTA course providers/training centers, but don't quite have the time (or inclination) to do it for Trinity stuff right now, as I've just come in from shopping and want to get some dinner on ).

[nickpellatt]

It was a Trinity course that I did...and it was available as a one month course (full time). I just saved and had a month off which fitted with my lifestyle and other commitments.

Trinity and CELTA do seem to cover pretty much the same bases though, and my understanding is there isnt a set program that will be the same with all providers, but will differ according to the school/college/tutors etc.
I had a friend do her Trinity course the same time as me, and whilst we did some things the same, there were also lots of differences.

Just wanted to mention that as I dont think there is only one course and one syllabus to follow.

Regarding retaking assignments, yes, you can. This applied to my course, and also to my friends course. Although I didnt need to resubmit my assignments (I scored B,C,C on mine), many of the peers did, and some of them were still waiting and resubmitting small sections around 6 weeks after the course ended.

There were 12 of us on my course, I was one of only two people who didnt have to resubmit anything....

Some advice I would give about the pre-course work (and some may disagree with this), is not to worry too much about it. It would appear to be designed to introduce the type of things you might be expected to learn during the course, rather than being a tool for you to learn and memorise. Although it was marked and returned, it wasnt directly addressed again on my course.

My advice....and this would have been of benefit on my course (remember Im suggesting they are all different according to provider), would be to have just learnt all the tenses, and the IPA.

These were both used extensively, and if you had a good knowledge of these, you would be in a very strong and informed position compared to everyone on my course.

I strongly believe that being a jack of all trades, master of none, isnt a helpful approach. Far better with grammar to really learn and master key areas, and keep adding to that knowledge as your progress.

Learning the tenses and being really familiar with them may seem simple to some of the old professional hands here....but this simple and essential part of grammar is still difficult for a lot of other teachers to grasp and remember.

So thats my advice......spend your time pre-course getting to grips with those, rather than losing sleep over the pre-course work

[Littlebird]

Thanks a lot everyone.

Spiral
Yes I am British and balk at the cost of doing a CELTA down the road let alone in Spain or France ! I will try to find out if ontesol is accredited to Trinity College London. I guess the bottom line is I don't like to take risks if the consequences could be dire. Maybe I should just get a grip but I am poor and now unemployed.

[Cenobite30]

[Chancellor]