Job Discussion Forums

[matttheboy]

I agree with Smooj and Gordon. The CELTA gave me a decent idea of what to expect and a basic idea of different teaching styles. It helps most, i think, with lesson planning which can be time consuming and difficult when one first starts out.

As for the suggestion that anyone needing to learn the grammar in their L1 will make a poor teacher, i think this is rubbish. English grammar (tenses and their uses, what a noun is, adverbs, relative clauses etc etc) is simply not taught in schools anymore. My mother can tell me what the present perfect continuous is but my brother, a well known journalist, copy-editor and editor of various magazines around Europe, has no idea whatsoever.

I learned my grammar through learning French, not English.

I would recommend a book by Parrot(t) called (i think) Grammar for English Language Teachers or something to that effect. I find it 100 times more useful than Swan. It's a book i always go back to when i'm teaching something new or want to win an argument in the staffroom

[shmooj]

[Deconstructor]

Guys, all these deltas, celtas, alphas and betas are just fine as far as teaching overseas goes. They do introduce you more or less to what teaching might be. If you already have the talent, then you're just that much ahead.

In fact, I don't think that anyone should get more education than these alphabet certs for the simple reason that no one gives a hoot for truly qualified teachers almost anywhere overseas. It clearly follows that you shouldn't spend your hard earned money, energy and time on a career that is overflowing with scams and patrons who know jack about teaching.

Get your alphabet cert, go have fun and see the world, come back, get your M.A or B.Ed, get a real teaching job where you'll be appreciated and your opinions valued and be happy. This is what I did, though I never got an alphabet cert. I left after getting a B.A. in English. I got a job in Korea right away. When I returned after more than a year, I got my M.A. and a TESL Certificate, which was part of a B.Ed 2 year program. After that university teaching job followed.

[shmooj]

[Deconstructor]

Shmooj wrote

[shmooj]

[deezy]

I agree with Gordon and Shmooj. I did my CELTA part time around 4 years ago, within a week was teaching and on my first day I did more teaching hours than the whole of the time I was doing the CELTA. Boy I learnt so much AFTER the CELTA course. But it gave me a structure to fall back on when I ran 'off the track'.

As my instructor said after I'd just gone solo in my glider: "You will now learn to fly". I'd mastered the basics, whatever else I learnt I learnt up there in the sky on my own.

The purpose of the CELTA (apart from making money for the institutions who provide the course), is so that you get a piece of paper which may then get you the job. My course tutor is doing a thesis as part of her Masters on "Is there life after CELTA". I'm one of her 'subjects'. Of the people who took part in my course, there are 2 of us still actively teaching. Maybe the others had more sense.

[Deconstructor]