CELTA: What will you learn?

Whether you have zero experience teaching or a few years’ worth, if you are considering the CELTA, you have probably wondered what you will learn from it? There is a reason the CELTA is the world’s leading TEFL certification and even though the intensive course is only four weeks long, the CELTA certificate is globally recognized as one of excellence. So what tools can the CELTA give you which you will need as an ESL teacher? Or if you already have some experience, what new tricks can a four-week course teach you.

As a CELTA trainee back in 2009, I was one of only four people in my group of twelve that had no prior teaching experience. As I struggled to keep my head above water planning lessons, writing assignments (you can download my CELTA assignments here), and dealing with a two hour commute everyday (yeah, I lived in San Jose and drove to the BART, then took the train to San Francisco to attend the course.. I honestly don’t know how I ever managed to pass the course!).

Anyway, as a trainee all those years ago, all I knew at the time was that there was a very steep learning curve for me. Last year, after I did the CELTA Trainer-in-Training, I realized exactly how steep that learning curve is.

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CELTA TRAINER-IN-TRAINING: Trainee Progress

This was one of the most interesting of the During CELTA tasks (a complete list is here) primarily because it allowed me, as a Trainer-in-Training, to track trainee progress along with my predictions and reflections throughout the course.

I had to pick four trainees in the first week of the course and reflect on their development through the four week intensive CELTA course, noting strengths and weaknesses in their teaching practice and response to TP feedback.

The course tutor had asked me to prepare a Find Someone Who for the first day of the course, as an introduction and ice-breaker activity. For this, I had to go through the candidate application forms and isolate interesting facts they had mentioned in their personal statements. I also needed to profile all the candidates before the start of the course for the Trainee Progress task. So I combined my efforts and made this killer table, killing two birds with one stone.