Job Discussion Forums

[Madame J]

Hullo,

I am looking to start a course at the beginning of next year, and as I am focussed entirely upon teaching children the CELTYL looks like the most practical route to take. However, I have heard that some employers are less likely to take the CELTYL seriously despite it being more geared towards their students. Would the best option, then, be to do the CELTA followed by the YL add on, bearing in mind that I have absolutely no interest in teaching adults and could well find the CELTA demotivating?

(On a slightly related sidenote, am I going to find the CELTA a struggle if my knowledge of grammar is minimal and I am a far more practical than academic person?)

Cheers.

[fluffyhamster]

Don't take this the wrong way, but I think a teacher needs to do at least a bit of adult teaching so that the stuff they "then" do with kids isn't too unsophisticated (and by the same token, you can learn how to e.g. teach potentially illiterate adults - it does happen! - by doing phonics with kids. Or transfer the sense of fun over, or whatever). So the CELTA with YL extension might not be a bad idea - would the CELTYL offer quite the same level of language analysis as the CELTA.

Grammar is something you will need to get to grips with at some point, and its more functional analyses can be of interest and benefit, especially if you end up having to write your own YL syllabus and materials for want of decent stuff (that being said, it is hard to think of a grammar book that would prepare you for the CELTA* whilst at the same time stripping things down to YL-like essentials...maybe this is something that you'll need to get used to doing yourself, unless you don't mind teaching whatever YL textbook forever and without question).

But I wouldn't be too worried about the lebel of language awareness required for the CELTA at least - it isn't impossible to learn enough to reach if not surpass the required standard, if you don't mind hard work (which is what teaching YL too can sometimes be!).

Someone was asking recently about CELTA preparation:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?t=64154

I posted a reply on the above-linked thread, and my last sub-link there ('Further reading') includes at its start dare I say it a reasonably "linguistically-informed" YL syllabus for Japanese elementary schools.

*Maybe something like David Crystal's Making Sense of English Grammar would hit the right sort of level for you, whilst being comprehensive enough to serve as a springboard into the CELTA? (I mention it in that 'Further reading' list also).

[zorro (3)]

I've recently finished the YL extension to the CELTA.

You still need to have a level of language analysis comparable to the CELTA. After all, you're teaching English to the kids.

Before I started teaching I didn't know what a verb was. But you get the required knowledge with experience, so I wouldn't worry too much about the language analysis side of it. You might even begin to enjoy it! I'm sure I'm not the only one on this forum who still has to research language points before some classes.. That's just the nature of our job.

Good luck.

[Marcoregano]

For what it's worth I have an MEd TESOL as well as the Trinity TESOL bla bla. Some people like grammar. I find it utterly tedious and teaching it terrifies me. IMO most students also loathe grammar and many switch off during grammar-oriented lessons.

Anyway, DO NOT worry about grammar - the course will give you some basics but if you're anything like me you will need to refer to a good grammar book on a regular basis - I find grammar rules so tiresome that they don't stay in my head.

Regarding teaching kids/adults, IMO there is NO need to go anywhere near adults if you don't want to. Kids and adults, oil and water, different animals. If you want to teach kids, stick with kids. There's very little difference between CELTYL and CELTA, I find it hard to believe that any serious employer would be biased towards one or the other.

[celtica]

Great to hear someone else (with an MEd TESOL!) with my intense dislike ( dare I call it hatred?) of teaching grammar .....

I have been teaching 20+ years and still loathe it ....do everything I can to avoid it.......and use every other method I can think of to teach it without teaching it ... if you see what I mean!


Do use it to help explain - one on one - a point or two if kids aren't 'getting it' ...whatever 'it' may be ... but TEACH it? UGH!

Like Marcoregano, I find almost all my students go to sleep with their eyes open when grammar comes up ....

[Madame J]

Thanks everyone, I've definitely got a little more info to chew over now. Mostly it's just reassuring that some of you evidently detest grammar as much as I do yet have managed to forge a career in ESL. There may be hope for me yet!

As for whether to do the CELTA with add on or skip straight to the CELTYL, on the other hand, is something I am still puzzling over. If only there was some authoritative body in this profession who could tell me straight which qualifications were going to be most important!

[MO39]

In Mexico I've found that my students (adults) want grammar explanations of areas of difficulty, possibly because that's what was emphasized in English classes they took when they were younger. If students are falling asleep during grammar explanations and practice, then maybe it's not being done in the interesting way I like to do it!

[spiral78]

I find that my students are quite happy to have a few 'grammar moments' in a class so long as the specific points we are reviewing are clearly relevant to the functional work we're doing. It's only about raising their level of awareness - I don't think that there are steps based on grammatical knowledge that lead to some functional achievement.

[fluffyhamster]

I can understand that some students (especially children) would not benefit from explicit grammar, but then, nobody was saying that explicit grammar teaching is what they do (me, I look for exemplars, in order to make lively, interesting and above all functional distinctions where necessary e.g. Japanese kids seem unaware of articles in English, and many Japanese Teachers of English aren't sure what they could do about this, so I try to show what an absence of the article might be taken to mean, and by implication, what they will be "failing" to convey if they don't attune more to the input and start trying to adjust their output accordingly). Just saying, I think grammar is a strand worth the teacher studying and weaving into at least the underlying fabric of lessons. If you don't yourself get to grips with the "problems" of grammar and really thrash things out in terms of more considered (and more considerable) input, the students may eventually start asking difficult questions, if not of you, then of future teachers. What you need to do, even though you are a native speaker, is sift and marshall good examples until they are making consistent sense (in terms of the "underlying" grammar) to you; then perhaps you will be seeing the language as a sometimes struggling learner does.