Hi all!
I finished the CELTA course about a month ago and I'm now looking for permanent work in Australia. As I expected, a lot of the work available at the moment seems to be casual/relief teaching.
I really don't mind relief teaching so long as I get some time to prepare for the class. What really worries me is getting a call at 8am and having to teach a class at 9am. I wouldn't classify grammar as one of my strengths and I feel it would be impossible for me to go to class unprepared for it.
Any ideas on how I might deal with such a situation?
HELP! Relief teaching!
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fluffyhamster
- Posts: 3031
- Joined: Tue Oct 26, 2004 6:57 pm
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Well, probably nobody's expecting you to go in and give explicit lectures on grammar (least of all the students), despite what the PPP methodology of the CELTA might have led you to believe. That being said, grammar is obviously important and a good way to organize a syllabus, especially one for lower-level learners, so you would do well to focus on it. But as you say, how exactly can you prepare yourself to "teach" this grammar?
I'd firstly suggest getting a few grammar practice books (if you haven't already done so) such as those by Murphy, or Swan and Walter, as these will give you at least some knowledge and confidence, whilst providing you with more directly contextualized ideas and hints of possible activities than a more detailed grammar/reference book proper (e.g. Eastwood's Oxford Guide to English Grammar, or Swan's Practical English Usage, which you might have bought for your CELTA and therefore already own), but do bear in mind that the devil (and usually the saviour too!) is often more to be found in the details contained in those more detailed references!
http://www.cambridge.org/elt/catalogue/ ... mmarinuse/
http://www.oupjapan.co.jp/teachers/samp ... orks.shtml
(CUP's 'Vocabulary in Use' series is also worth a look!)
Next, you could consider investing in one of the more popular, standard courses to see how a particular author or authors envisage the grammar as communicatively taking a more distinct and obvious shape than the above grammar practice books (that is, coursebooks will offer some actual activities as opposed to less contextualized practice sentences, not that these activities are necessarily always a better starting point for your purposes). If you don't want to buy a book, you can get a good idea of what such courses contain by following these links:
http://www.cambridge.org/elt/resources/ (lots of ideas here)
Two specific courses at the above link are:
http://uk.cambridge.org/elt/letstalk/support/
http://us.cambridge.org/esl/nic/support/default.htm
Then, there are your "recipe" books, with the odd good idea and nice activity, but generally full of mere time-fillers (wasters?) that often don't provide enough input language/example grammar/functional exponents and phrases etc - these books are full of stuff mainly for that pedagogically useful construct, the "intermediate" student. Indeed, the only books that seem to be at all "principled" (in attempting to be structured in any comprehensive way, "linguistically") in the CUP Handbooks for Language Teachers series are these two:
http://www.cambridge.org/elt/elt_projec ... id=2500405
http://www.cambridge.org/elt/elt_projec ... id=2500397
The problem is, they are not particularly exciting titles; inspiration comes after a while with the Ur, however.
The rest of the CHLT and OUP Resource Books series:
http://www.cambridge.org/elt/catalogue/teachers/chlt/
http://www.oupjapan.co.jp/teachers/samp ... hers.shtml
Books such as those by Jill Hadfield (the "copy and cut up" kind of communication games) are kind of a halfway house between coursebook supplemntary activities and the jumbled assortment you find in recipe books - worth a quick look, but then, you probably knew about these too. There are many of these kind of books available, some reasonable, many so-so, some dire.
http://www.campusi.com/author_Jill_Hadfield.htm
By working through the practice books and a few courses, plus the resource sites I mentioned above, you should soon be on your way to compiling a portfoilio of graded and sequenced activities. If the majority of the students you end up meeting seem to be capable of discussions, you will be able to "more" than teach or review the basics with them, and can relax a little more and start developing your own materials and approach even moreso.
To be honest I have never been one to fall back upon stuff that every other teacher seems to be using, I really like to think about the language and try to develop something original - I just don't trust half of what is on offer in terms of how much it will foster genuine communication, understanding and knowledge-ability, and often we can develop something better, improve upon the original activity (especially in terms of the language it recommends the students "practise", with implications for possibly scrapping the original activity and developing something entirely different in its place; remember always that there is a level beyond the sentence, that is, discourse (obviously)).
In your situation (relief teaching at short notice), you obviously need something sooner rather than later, but I hope this doesn't stop you from at least making notes on things you'd like to be doing instead...
I'd firstly suggest getting a few grammar practice books (if you haven't already done so) such as those by Murphy, or Swan and Walter, as these will give you at least some knowledge and confidence, whilst providing you with more directly contextualized ideas and hints of possible activities than a more detailed grammar/reference book proper (e.g. Eastwood's Oxford Guide to English Grammar, or Swan's Practical English Usage, which you might have bought for your CELTA and therefore already own), but do bear in mind that the devil (and usually the saviour too!) is often more to be found in the details contained in those more detailed references!
http://www.cambridge.org/elt/catalogue/ ... mmarinuse/
http://www.oupjapan.co.jp/teachers/samp ... orks.shtml
(CUP's 'Vocabulary in Use' series is also worth a look!)
Next, you could consider investing in one of the more popular, standard courses to see how a particular author or authors envisage the grammar as communicatively taking a more distinct and obvious shape than the above grammar practice books (that is, coursebooks will offer some actual activities as opposed to less contextualized practice sentences, not that these activities are necessarily always a better starting point for your purposes). If you don't want to buy a book, you can get a good idea of what such courses contain by following these links:
http://www.cambridge.org/elt/resources/ (lots of ideas here)
Two specific courses at the above link are:
http://uk.cambridge.org/elt/letstalk/support/
http://us.cambridge.org/esl/nic/support/default.htm
Then, there are your "recipe" books, with the odd good idea and nice activity, but generally full of mere time-fillers (wasters?) that often don't provide enough input language/example grammar/functional exponents and phrases etc - these books are full of stuff mainly for that pedagogically useful construct, the "intermediate" student. Indeed, the only books that seem to be at all "principled" (in attempting to be structured in any comprehensive way, "linguistically") in the CUP Handbooks for Language Teachers series are these two:
http://www.cambridge.org/elt/elt_projec ... id=2500405
http://www.cambridge.org/elt/elt_projec ... id=2500397
The problem is, they are not particularly exciting titles; inspiration comes after a while with the Ur, however.
The rest of the CHLT and OUP Resource Books series:
http://www.cambridge.org/elt/catalogue/teachers/chlt/
http://www.oupjapan.co.jp/teachers/samp ... hers.shtml
Books such as those by Jill Hadfield (the "copy and cut up" kind of communication games) are kind of a halfway house between coursebook supplemntary activities and the jumbled assortment you find in recipe books - worth a quick look, but then, you probably knew about these too. There are many of these kind of books available, some reasonable, many so-so, some dire.
http://www.campusi.com/author_Jill_Hadfield.htm
By working through the practice books and a few courses, plus the resource sites I mentioned above, you should soon be on your way to compiling a portfoilio of graded and sequenced activities. If the majority of the students you end up meeting seem to be capable of discussions, you will be able to "more" than teach or review the basics with them, and can relax a little more and start developing your own materials and approach even moreso.
To be honest I have never been one to fall back upon stuff that every other teacher seems to be using, I really like to think about the language and try to develop something original - I just don't trust half of what is on offer in terms of how much it will foster genuine communication, understanding and knowledge-ability, and often we can develop something better, improve upon the original activity (especially in terms of the language it recommends the students "practise", with implications for possibly scrapping the original activity and developing something entirely different in its place; remember always that there is a level beyond the sentence, that is, discourse (obviously)).
In your situation (relief teaching at short notice), you obviously need something sooner rather than later, but I hope this doesn't stop you from at least making notes on things you'd like to be doing instead...