Does anyone know about getting CELTA certified in or around Taiwan? Also, does anyone have an opinion on the value of the program? the difficulty? methods? etc?
I’ve been in school to long to stop taking classes.
[quote=“gnat”]Does anyone know about getting CELTA certified in or around Taiwan? Also, does anyone have an opinion on the value of the program? the difficulty? methods? etc?
I’ve been in school to long to stop taking classes.[/quote]Lots of threads on this already. Here are some.
forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.ph … ight=celta
[forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.ph … ight=celta](IELTS or CELTA in Taiwan
forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.ph … ight=celta
forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.ph … ight=celta
I think for real CELTA you need to go to HK or Thailand. Yes, I’d say the course is worth it, especially if you already have some teaching experience. It’s even better if the teaching practice/observation they give you during the course is with real ESOL classes rather than “mock-teaching” your fellow students. I believe some CELTA centres only offer the latter.
The Trinity Cert. TESOL is the only equivalent qualification AFAIK. It is also recognised internationally and covers pretty much the same material, in the same period of time. But I haven’t heard of any places offering this course in Asia.
I wouldn’t say that it is all that difficult, but rather that it is intense. It’s kind of like four straight weeks of finals week in college. Don’t be afraid to take it as long as you are prepared to center your life around it for a month.
Also brush up on your grammar. I got rejected by the International House in Newcastle because I didn’t know how to explain verb tenses in layman’s terms during my interview. I had to settle for a lesser-known language school in London (my target city anyway) who was a little more generous in how they perceived the grammar part of my interview. This is with me having three years teaching experience (including one year in the US with university students), a degree in linguistics and numerous courses on syntax, phonology, usage, and a certificate from my university to teach EFL. I’d think that programs outside the UK might be a little more lenient in their candidates’ interviews.
If you make it in, I can assure you that the intensive 4-week program, which I assume you will want to do, will be very tough.
My class alone represented 6 different countries. Half of us had already been teaching English for at least 3 years by the time we joined the course; yet only two people out of 13 managed to get above a Pass, one of whom had been teaching ESL for over 10 years. Two of the candidates, one of whom was a college professor, failed the course. No one passed on all four papers on the first submissions and one person dropped out of the course after the second day because it was too tough for her. Because we spent so much time together, we formed a bond with each other. I still talk to some of the people who were in my CELTA class even though we haven’t been together since 2003.
Michael Swan’s Practical English Usage will be your Bible. You can pick it up at Cave’s (maybe Page One now that it’s open) for about $880.
Oh, and it’s “too long”. 
Cheers.
I did the CELTA in HK at the British Council. Unfortunately, BCHK no longer offers the CELTA. They only offer the CELTYL and the CELTA YL extension. The Trinity College Cert TESOL is also offered in HK at a place called English for Asia. I don’t know how much the Trinity course costs in HK, but the CELTA was one of the most expensive in the world. The provider’s, and thus the student’s costs are higher in HK than in most places. I would go for Thailand or Malaysia.
I wouldn’t worry too much about the grammar stuff. The reason for not getting onto many CELTA courses is that they are often oversubscribed. I’ve heard people say that tutors on courses held in England are a little pickier and more parochial, but most of the people I’ve known (including plenty of non-Poms) who did the course in the UK had no such complaints.
I think it can be stressful, but it isn’t difficult to pass. The difficult thing is getting anything higher than a pass. Of the twenty people on my course, only me and two other guys got a Pass B. The majority of the people on the course were already qualified teachers of some sort. Nobody failed. All of us were proficient, most highly proficient, in at least one foreign language. Something like 25% of all candidates worldwide get a Pass B. I remember reading that less than 1% of all candidates get a Pass A.
I got above standard on all but one of my teaching practice sessions, so only a B for me 
. Tutors and course coordinators are quite reticent about giving any hints on what can get you an A. I was later told that a candidate generally has to get all above standards on TP to even be considered for an A, and then the tutors have to argue the case for giving an A to Cambridge ESOL. If you take the course, assume that you have no chance of getting a Pass A.
I would do the Trinity course for the simple reason that Cambridge won’t replace your certificate if you lose it. They’ll take the thousand quid the course costs, though. And it they lose your cheque, they’ll expect you to replace it.
Trinity will issue a replacement certificate no problem.
The courses are by and large identical.
[quote=“Jive Turkey”] The Trinity College Cert TESOL is also offered in HK at a place called English for Asia. I don’t know how much the Trinity course costs in HK, but the CELTA was one of the most expensive in the world.[/quote]Don’t know about HK specifically, but I think Trinity is a bit cheaper in general.
Are these courses usually 4 weeks? I thought some places did them over 6 weeks. I think you’d get more out of the course that way. I did mine part-time over an academic year.
My CELTA was
[quote=“joesax”][quote=“Jive Turkey”] The Trinity College Cert TESOL is also offered in HK at a place called English for Asia. I don’t know how much the Trinity course costs in HK, but the CELTA was one of the most expensive in the world.[/quote]Don’t know about HK specifically, but I think Trinity is a bit cheaper in general.
Are these courses usually 4 weeks? I thought some places did them over 6 weeks. I think you’d get more out of the course that way. I did mine part-time over an academic year.[/quote]
The Trinity course here in HK is one month long. The CELTA in HK was a whopping HK$25,000 (HK$7.8=US$1). Last I heard, the Trinity course here was about HK$20,000. I don’t know exactly how they manage to be cheaper, but it does seem that CELTA is generally a bit more expensive than Trinity.
As for the length of courses, I think the most common mode for both CELTA and Trinity is 4 weeks, but there are a lot of “semi-intensive” courses as well. The CELTA I did was 10 weeks (but still felt like a full-time course). Some courses may stretch out as long as five or six months, but the total number of hours is still about the same. I’m quite glad that I didn’t do a four week CELTA. I doubt I would have gotten a Pass B if I had and I know I wouldn’t have had any time to do any outside reading to back up what I was learning on the course.