Job Discussion Forums

[nz_taniwha]

Hi,
I'm a 25 year old New Zealander who is starting the 4-week CELTA course here in Auckland on June 27. I have the pre-course task that I'm working through at the moment, and have borrowed a few ESL teaching books from my sister's partner who did the course last year.

Apart from the pre-course task, I was just wondering what people would suggest in terms of pre-study before the course begins? I realise everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses, but when you started the CELTA, what did you wish you'd had more knowledge of? Whether it was teaching-related, or language skills, maybe...

If it's relevant, I'm hoping to get a job shortly after my course (September start I guess) in Central/Eastern Europe.

[mzuri]

In regard to teaching approaches, I was a complete newbie re: terms of art and certain methodologies. Before you go, studying up on student-centered versus teacher-centered lessons would be extremely useful.

Getting acquainted with phonetic symbols will save you some time in lesson prep. also.

Otherwise, what I wish I had done was brought supplies with me such as three-ring binder, sheet protectors, my own markers, and perhaps rustled up some fun lesson exercises. Our site had plenty of resource materials, but we couldn't remove them from the resource room except to make photocopies.

I was glad I'd brought my mp3 player, a voice recorder, and later bought a tiny portable speaker. I used music and my own interview role play in my lessons. Helped that I had my own equipment with me.

The voice recorder was also helpful for the student analysis assignment. Ditto for the self-analysis where you'll have to record one of your lessons. At our site, we needed to share equipment, and there's always the risk of equipment failure and scheduling difficulties.

Photocopiers/printers were at a premium at my CELTA site in Mexico; if I were to do it again, I'd seriously consider taking a portable printer with me.

Be sure to take a flash drive with you, even if you're taking your own laptop, which I would recommend for offsite homework. We couldn't connect our laptops to the school printer, so I usually left my laptop in my room, and used a flashdrive on the school PC (and as a back-up, emailed the same stuff to myself so I could retrieve that on the school PC). This may sound like overkill, but: 1) the course is intense and time can be short before you go "on" for a class; and 2) I got caught out at least twice with system or process glitches, usually my own pilot error.

Enjoy the course!

[nz_taniwha]

That's fantastic information, thanks a lot! I hadn't thought about anything like a voice recorder, but I can see how that would be useful. I've also read about IPA and figured it's probably a useful thing to get the hang of.

[Jbhughes]

Others and I gave some advice here in the newbie section:

http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?t=88782&highlight=celta

A little of it overlaps with Mzurr's advice, although much of it is different. Actually, I wish I had their advice before doing mine, very practical stuff.

[DMcK]

brush up on your sleep beforehand. seriously.

[nickpellatt]

As mentioned, learn or get familiar with the IPA. This was a big part of my course, and few of us had any idea of it at all. Knowing it would be a big head start.

Learn the English tense system. Most trainees on my course, me included, didnt know it very well at all and I reckon knowing both IPA and the tense system would be enough to put your ahead of most trainees, and to be honest, many teachers LOL

[Shroob]

I'm due to start a 4 week CELTA course in July, like you I am feeling nervous and under-prepaired!

I've completed the pre-course task and realise how little I know about the English language!

I am brushing up on my tenses and pronunciation (recognising word stress is a problem I have).

I can recommend 'Teaching Tenses' by Rosemary Aitken, this arrived yesterday in the post and I can see already it will be useful to me.

[RobertH]

The pre-course task looks daunting, but actually I found much of the content was not strictly needed to pass the course, though it is useful an interesting anyway. Being clear on identifying the verb tenses and learning when we use them is very useful and important. This site (although written for EFL/ESL students) is quite useful for this:

http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/verbtenseintro.html

Another thing you will find helpful to look at is skills lessons - reading lessons, listening lessons, speaking lessons and writing lessons. These lessons are commonly taught in EFL/ESL and knowledge of the theory behind them is needed to pass the course.

In reading/listening lessons, you start with a warmer, then move onto questions that test the students' understanding of the gist, then an activity which tests their ability to understand smaller details. On my course, they were quite nitpicky about following this formula and some of the others failed assignments because they hadn't got this theory sorted out.

I can recommend TEFL for Dummies, by Michelle Maxom. It's a great book which has chapters that give you an introduction to the different types of skills lessons and some cool idas for use in class. You might not understand it all at first but read it anyway, it will become clear as you get feedback from your tutors over the course.

Good luck with the 4-week course. I did the course part-time over 5 months, and even the intensive course at my centre was 6 weeks. 4-week courses are insane in my opinion, but people seem to get through them OK and I'm sure you will too. Be aware that it will be really, really intensive though. Follow the others' advice and get all your stationery, files, etc. sorted before the course begins - it will make a difference.

Best of luck again.