CELTA Language Related Tasks Assignment
If you are a native English speaker with little or no language teaching experience, this may well be the assignment you find most daunting. Many of us are not really taught much in the way of grammar at school, often finishing high school not knowing much more than “noun, verb, adjective and adverb” and possibly being unsure between those. In my experience, non-natives often find this assignment less challenging as they will (most likely) have learnt a lot about English grammar during their studies of English, although knowing what to write may still be challenging.
If you are worried, hopefully this guide will help you to understand what you need to write.
What do you have to do?
For this assignment you need to analyse a number of grammar and vocabulary (lexical) items. These may be presented in a text or they may simply be a list of items. In some cases, you may get a choice of items. Typically you will have between 4 and 6 items to analyse, with 2 or 3 grammar items and 2 or 3 lexical items.
You are required to write between 750 and 1000 words. This needs to be split (though not necessarily evenly) between the items. You are therefore aiming to write between 170-250 words for each item, depending on how many there are. This may sound like a lot of words, but it actually isn’t when you realise how much you could write.
There are a number of aspects of the language point to be analysed, which includes:
- meaning
- conveying meaning
- checking understanding
- form
- pronunciation
- problems and solutions
Grammar Items
Students and teachers alike often seem to find grammar scarier than lexis, so we will start with these. You could be given items such as:
- The weather has been less severe than expected.
- She had left when they arrived.
- The restaurant was opened in 1982.
Identification
The first thing you will need to do is identify what the grammar item is so that you can talk about it. It is important to be correct about the terminology. The above examples are:
- comparative adjective
- past perfect
- past simple passive
Meaning
Having identified what the grammar items are, you next need to explain what they mean. You may need to be careful here when dealing with some grammar points that can have more than one meaning. For example, the present continuous can be used to show a future plan as well as something that is happening temporarily or is in progress at the moment. You will therefore need to consider the context to understand how it is being used.
For the above items:
- The comparative is used here to compare the actual weather with the weather that was expected.
- In this example, the past perfect is used to show the first past action happened before the second past action.
- The past simple passive shows that the subject was the recipient of an action, rather than the agent, i.e. the verb was done to the subject, rather than performed by the subject.
Conveying meaning
Once you have explained the meaning, you need to think about how you would get this across to students.
For tenses, many teachers like to use timelines. These are great for this assignment because as well as making the point clear, they also use few words!
For other grammar points, timelines may not work. You therefore need to find other ways to convey the meaning. This may be through examples, images, video, realia, etc.
For the above examples:
- Tell students I went to Iceland in December. Draw a person, elicit that it is me. Draw a thought bubble coming from the person’s head. Elicit what weather they would expect in Iceland. Write/draw their suggestions. Elsewhere draw the sun and a thermometer showing 10 degrees. Ask students what I expected and how the weather was different.
- Draw a timeline (include the timeline in your answer) with an for now on the right hand side. Draw two x’s at different points to the left of the arrow and number them 1 and 2. Elicit which is when she left and which is when they arrived.
- Show students a picture of a restaurant being opened i.e. someone cutting some ribbon outside a restaurant. Elicit that it is the restaurant owner/manager who is cutting the ribbon to open the restaurant.
Checking Understanding
However, you choose to convey meaning, you will be expected to check understanding. This often means CCQs (concept checking questions). This is by no means the only way to check understanding.
A CCQ is a question that checks students understand the language point. To be effective they should:
- avoid using the grammar point being checked;
- contain simpler grammar than that being checked;
- require a short answer (often yes or no).
You should aim to have at least 2-3 CCQs per item, and these often build on each other. You should also give anticipated answers which are typically written in brackets. Try to avoid having all of the answers as yes or no so that the students do have to think about the answers.
For example (using the same grammar points as above):
less severe than:
- Did I think the weather would be good or bad? (bad)
- Did I think it would be a little bit bad or very bad? (very)
- Was the weather very bad? (no, it might not have been good, but it wasn’t very bad)
she had left when they arrived:
- Which happened first: she arrived or they arrived? (she arrived)
- Was she at the party/event when they arrived? (no)
- Did she see them when she left? (no)
the restaurant was opened:
- Did the restaurant open itself? (no)
- Did a person open the restaurant? (yes)
- Is it important who opened the restaurant? (no)
Form
You may choose to complete the form before focusing on meaning. This is perfectly acceptable in the context of the assignment (but remember we deal with meaning first in lessons). For this, you simply need to name the component parts of the structure, e.g.
- more/less + adjective + than
- subject + had + past participle
- subject + was/were + past participle
Pronunciation
For the pronunciation, you are expected to make use of the IPA (international phonemic alphabet). You will need to transcribe the part of the phrase (or possibly the whole sentence).
Further, you should highlight other pertinent aspects of pronunciation such as stress, intonation and connected speech.
For our examples:
- /lɛs sɪˈvɪə ðæn/
- /ʃi hæd lɛft/
- /ðə ˈrɛstəˌrɑnt wʌz ˈoʊpənd/
Problems and Solutions
You will also need to identify some problems and solutions that students might have with these language points.
Ideally, unless told otherwise, you want to identify problems with meaning, form and pronunciation. You then want to identify ways that you can clarify these for students.
Note that it is not acceptable to simply say that students might have a problem understanding or pronouncing something. Make sure you say what students will do specifically, e.g.
- students might think that … means …
- students might write … as …
- students might pronounce … as …
To take just our first example using the comparative:
Meaning
Problem: Students might think the weather was very good.
Solution: Compare two situations with bad weather.
Form
Problem: Students might write less as les.
Solution: Have students write comparatives with “less” in a gap fill so that they practice writing it.
Pronunciation
Problem: Students might pronounce than as then.
Solution: Drill the use of than with emphasis on its unstressed form.
Lexical Items
Lexical items aren’t really that different to grammar items – you still need to go through the same stages. Nevertheless, we will work through a few examples.
- the plane took off
- he haggled over the price
- she hoped for a romantic getaway
Identification
As with grammar items, the first task is to decided what each item is. For these examples we have:
- a phrasal verb
- a regular verb
- a compound noun
Meaning
For each item, you need to identify the meaning. Context remains important here – you need to give the meaning of the word as it is used in the context. Try to express this in simple statements, e.g.
- The plane was at an airport. It was on the ground. It left the ground. It was/is in the air.
- He wanted to buy something. He didn’t like the price that the seller wanted. He offered a different price. The seller didn’t accept his offer. The buyer and seller offered several different prices. We don’t know if he bought the item.
- She wanted to leave her hometown for a short time. She wanted something different to her normal life.
Checking Understanding
By writing simple sentences about the word or grammar point, it becomes quite easy to formulate CCQs by simply changing those statements into questions:
took off:
(While showing a picture, or perhaps using a toy plane to demonstrate)
- Where was the plane? (at the airport)
- Was it on the ground or in the air? (on the ground)
- Is it on the ground or in the air now? (in the air)
haggled:
- Did he want to buy something? (yes)
- How much did the seller want?
- How much did he want to pay?
- Did they agree on a price?
getaway:
- Did she want to stay at home? (no)
- Did she want to go somewhere different? (yes)
- Did she want to go away for a week or forever? (more likely a week)
Form
For the form, you need to say something about the class of word the item fits into and how it operates in a sentence.
For a phrasal verb like “take off”, you might mention its irregular past from, whether it requires an object (transitivity) and whether this object can be between the verb and the particle, or must come afterwards.
For a verb such as haggle, you can simply say that it is a regular verb and whether it requires an object.
For a noun like getaway, we might point out that it is part of the collocation “romantic getaway” and is a compound formed from the phrasal verb “to get away”. It is in fact an example of nominalisation, where a noun is formed from a verb. We can also mention countability, and that it has a regular plural ending.
Pronunciation
As with grammatical items, when it comes to pronunciation, you are expected to use the IPA, and will be expected to give the word stress at a minimum. For example:
- /tʊk ‘ɔf/
- /ˈhæɡəld/
- /ˈɡɛtəˌweɪ/
Problems and Solutions
As with grammatical items, you need to try to anticipate problems with meaning, form and pronunciation. For the word getaway:
Meaning
Problem: Students may think it means a long holiday.
Solution: Have a CCQ about whether it applies to long or short holidays.
Form
Problem: Students may write the word with a space between get and away.
Solution: Ensure students see this word written and provide a controlled practice activity in which they need to write it.
Pronunciation
Problem: Students may pronounce getaway more like gateway.
Solution: Drill the two words- getaway and gateway – so students can hear the difference.
References
You will need to include some published resources in your assignment, this might include a grammar resource and printed or online dictionaries. See the recommended reading section for a list of useful resources.
Common Problems
Some of the common mistakes I see on this assignment include:
- Analysing and checking the understanding of vocabulary in a grammar item. For example, in “the restaurant was opened”, I am not interested in what a restaurant is, or what it means to open something.
- Not getting to the heart of the meaning. As suggested above, try making simple statements about what you know from the sentence. This will help your CCQs to get to the point.
- Not enough CCQs. One is certainly not enough. Two might be if you have some other ways of clarifying meaning too. Aim for three or four CCQs if you can.
- Wrong stress. If you’re not sure where the stress goes, look in a dictionary.
- Insufficient or very unlikely problems. Try to make sure you have one for each of meaning, form and pronunciation.
- Solutions are either not linked to problems or do not seem they would resolve them.
- References not given.
Recommended Reading
Cambridge Learner’s Dictionary Fourth Edition. (2021). Cambridge University Press.
Murphy, R. (2019) English Grammar in Use Fifth Edition. Cambridge University Press.
Parrott, M. (2010) Grammar for English Language Teachers. Cambridge University Press.
Scrivener, J. (2010) Teaching English Grammar: What to Teach and How to Teach it. Macmillan.
Swan, M. (2016) Practical English Usage Fourth Edition. Oxford University Press.
Workman, G. (2008) Concept Questions and Time Lines. Gem Publishing.
