How to Pass CELTA
Contents
- Tip 1: Put Everything on Hold
- Tip 2: Get your Tech Ready
- Tip 3: Set a Schedule
- Tip 4: Start the Assignments ASAP
- Tip 5: Reflect Immediately after the Lesson
- Tip 6: Act on Feedback
- Tip 7: Get Students Working Together
- Tip 8: Keep Instructions Simple
- Tip 9: Get Organised
- Tip 10: Work with your Colleagues
- Tip 11: Offload and Remember it will be over soon
If you’ve spoken to anyone who has taken CELTA, you’ve probably heard them talk about how intensive it is. This worries some people who believe that they are unable to meet the demands of the course. The truth is that CELTA isn’t actually that difficult providing you give it the required attention, understand what you are letting yourself in for and manage your time and wellbeing through the course.
The tips in this post should help you to do these things and tell you how to pass CELTA.
Tip 1: Put Everything on Hold
CELTA is a demanding course, especially when done full time over 4 weeks. Part time courses of 3 or 6 months are usually available, if you don’t want this intensity, or need to fit the course in around a job.
If you’re doing the CELTA full time, you should treat this as a full-tile job, and then some. You will be required to attend input sessions through the day and to teach or observe in the evening. Your lesson planning and assignment writing will be on the weekend. Assuming you are one of those people that likes to sleep at night too, that barely leaves you any time for other luxuries like eating.
If you do the CELTA part time, it will still be fairly intensive. You will probably find that at least one day a week is taken up by input sessions and two evenings a week are for observation or teaching. If you work a full time job at the same time, you’ll find your only spare day and remaining evenings are taken up with lesson planning and assignment writing.
Now that the CELTA is online, you may find the input has been replaced by Moodle units that you work through at your own speed.
Before starting the CELTA, do tell your friends and family that you are going to be busy. Try to put off any time-consuming plans, and you might want to freeze your gym membership and Netflix account as well.
Tip 2: Get your Tech Ready
If you are doing an online CELTA, you will have no choice but to use technology to complete the course. You are going to need a computer or laptop with a good, reliable internet package. If your computer or laptop is on its last legs, it’s a good idea to use that as an excuse to upgrade, or you might want to borrow one if you can.
You’ll want to have a decent webcam and microphone (if not built in to your device). You don’t need to go for top of the range equipment from the off, but a 1080p web cam with a built-in microphone should be fairly inexpensive and will be adequate for the task. The Logitech C920 is a good choice.
You’ll likely be expected to use a tool like Google Drive to share your portfolio, which will also likely mean using Google documents for your plans and assignments, although you can use Microsoft Word or another word processor. In your lessons, you may need to use some form of presentation software such as Microsoft Powerpoint or Google Slides.
If you are doing CELTA to start working as a teacher, I would recommend setting up a gmail account just for the CELTA. This will help you tune out some of the other noise you have going on in your life and focus on what you need to do for the CELTA. Having a professional email for teaching will be useful for other reasons later in your career.
If you’re doing the course face to face, there is potentially more to sort out. You will likely still need a laptop or computer to prepare plans and write assignments. You will want access to a printer and copier, which the school will hopefully be able to provide. A USB drive is a must as well for instances where you have to transfer any files (although there are other ways).
You might decide to use the school’s printer and copier. However, don’t expect much sympathy if this breaks. As a back-up it may help to check if there is anywhere near the school that does printing or copying or to make sure you do it in advance.
Also, if your course provider has high-tech classrooms, be cautious about depending on this. If the tech doesn’t work, you still need to do your lesson, so make sure you have a plan B. When I did my CELTA, this happened to me and although I still got a to standard for the lesson, the comments said that it was close to not being to standard.
Tip 3: Set a Schedule
Once you know the course schedule, set your own schedule. You need to allow time for planning your lessons, writing assignments and also to plan a few hours a week to keep your sanity.
As stated in the first tip, you won’t have much time, but you can arrange a phone call to family and friends, a chat with your significant other or to go for a walk.
Tip 4: Start the Assignments ASAP
On the topic of time management, don’t wait to start the assignments once they tell you about them. Of course, if you have a lesson coming up soon, then you may need to focus on that first, but at least look at the assignment brief and start thinking about it. Break the assignment down and try to conquer parts of each day.
The same is true of anything they give you to do. When they tell you to do a video observation, get it done as soon as you can. You don’t want to allow several things to build up and all become due at once.
Tip 5: Reflect Immediately after the Lesson
The purpose of reflection is for you to think about what worked and what didn’t in your lesson. It is best to do this as soon as possible after the lesson while it is fresh in your mind.
You can write this in bullet points and you don’t need to be too creative here. What is important is to get down some ideas of what you did well and what could have gone better.
I’ve yet to come across a lesson where there were no positive points to be made, or a lesson where nothing could have gone better.
In particular, make sure you reflect on the points that your tutors have told you to work on in your previous lessons. If you feel you have improved, say how. If you haven’t, say why.
Tip 6: Act on Feedback
The why academic managers like CELTA (and the Trinity CertTESOL) over other TEFL certificates is that you get feedback on actual teaching practice from experienced tutors. We know that to pass CELTA this is actually the thing that you most need to do – act on the feedback given.
Basically the key to passing CELTA is to be a better teacher at the end of the course than when you started. The way to achieve this is to take what your tutors say and implement it into your lessons.
If your tutors say the 10 minutes you spent presenting the language was too long, spend 5 minutes on this in the next lesson. If they say you need to get the students to work in pairs more, next lesson have more pair work activities. If they say you need to stop pacing near the whiteboard, stop pacing near the whiteboard.
As an academic manager, the reason why I hire teachers with CELTAs isn’t because it makes you a perfect teacher. I hire them because I know they can accept and act on feedback, and so I know they will continue to grow as teachers.
Tip 7: Get Students Working Together
Two common complaints about English teachers are that firstly they speak too much and secondly the students speak too little. You could say this is one complaint, and if you fix one part, then you fix the other.
The key to getting students doing most of the talking in a lesson is pair and group work. This is not difficult at all. For example, in a vocabulary lesson, you might have 8-10 items you want students to learn. Rather than presenting what each one means, get them into pairs or groups with some pictures showing these items. Have them tell each other what they can see while you listen to check which ones they struggle with. Bring them back together and go through the few they had problems with.
Peer checks are another simple way to have more student to student time. After an individual activity, have students check their answers together. It’s simple, but effective.
Tip 8: Keep Instructions Simple
Instructions are also a common problem for teachers and add to the amount of speaking they do in class.
The key is to plan instructions beforehand. Think about what is the essential information students need, and plan to say this. You can even write a script. It might look something like this:
Ok, we’re going to play a game.
You will be in teams.
1, 2, 1, 2, etc. (give numbers to students)
Put your hand up numbers 1s. (demo and wait) Number 2s (demo and wait) (repeat numbering if didn’t work)
Team 1 over here please. (wait for students to move)
Team 2 over here please. (wait for students to move)
One person from your team runs to the board. (demo)
They write a hobby, for example ….? (elicit example)
Then they run back, give the pen to the next person and go to the back. (demo)
What’s the first thing you do? (run to the board)
Does everyone run to the board? (no, first person)
Do you write one hobby or three hobbies? (one)
Where do you go when you finish? (back of the line)
Ready? 3, 2, 1, go!
Also, you are expected to use ICQs (instruction checking questions to check students understand. There are some in the script above. Can you spot them?
Tip 9: Get Organised
If you’re doing the face to face course, you are going to receive a lot of handouts in the input sessions. If you have online input you will also receive many documents. Additionally, you will have an online portfolio. Make sure you keep copies of things you want to keep after the course in a place where you can refer back to them.
Tip 10: Work with your Colleagues
You are not the only teacher on the CELTA, and you will be part of a teaching practice group. Depending on how the course is organised, you will likely be part of a group of six trainees that work with one tutor, and you will be further divided into a group of 3 trainees that teach on the same day.
Make sure you work closely with your other trainees, especially the ones you will need to hand over to promptly.
Here are a few more ways you can work closely together:
- Set up a Google spreadsheet and share it with your colleagues. Add information about the students and have your colleagues do the same. This is very useful for the Focus on the Learner assignment.
- Use the same spreadsheet to make notes about each others’ lessons. Don’t be mean, but try to add some positives. It can be hard to think of the positives when your lesson has gone very differently to what you expected. It’s useful for the reflection, but also motivating.
- Meet up before the lesson and have run through. This is particularly important when teaching online because it helps you get used to the features of the platform early on such as screen and audio sharing or setting up breakout rooms.
Tip 11: Offload and Remember it will be over soon
When you tell people you are busy, make sure you keep a few people open for a chat. At some point during CELTA, it will get a bit much and you will probably want to have a rant. It’s better to do this than let it boil up and lose it at your tutors, colleagues or students.
And remember CELTA will all be over before you know it, and you will look back on it with fond memories.
Now you know how to pass CELTA and remain sane throughout the experience.
