I did my CELTA at Regent’s Language School in London, Englad in July 2003. I already had a degree in linguistics where the focus of my major was studying learning theories and practices, phonology, syntax (much more fun than it sounds), and basic grammar usage. I found what was taught in the CELTA course I did was very specific to British English and some of it conflicted with what I had learned in university.
One of my tutors was pretty open to hearing some of the things I had learned in the States. The other more or less told me that I should inform the students ahead of time that I was an American English speaker so they wouldn’t be shocked by my bad English. Unsurprisingly, my lowest marks were under the latter tutor.
It seemed like out of the 11 students on our course, only one of the candidates got a pass on the four papers the first time she submitted them. She received a Pass A…and had been teaching ESL in the public schools of Hungary for over 10 years by the time she did the course.
I’d say the center was okay, not the highest quality of resources available, but the staff was extremely helpful at the school and most of the teachers there were great with helping us during our observation periods. The low point in my course was having my backpack stolen which contained all of my notes, my lesson plan for that week, and some other priceless, but monetarily worthless items. The tutors were very understanding for my situation. I appreciated that.
I got my certificate in a timely manner and they did not kid about how beautiful the section where I did my course (near Embankment) would be when they were advertising the school.
Ah yes, the first day teaching. I was lucky and got the advanced class as my first class although grades-wise, I would have done better to start with beginner and then ended with advanced when they expected more. Not like I had a choice.
We were expected to follow the typical commercial adult ESL series and plan lessons based on the book. There was a lot of photocopying involved and I rewrote quite a few of the pages to make them more visually appealing (my tutors liked that part of my lessons). The lessons started out short…about 20 minutes or so and eventually went up to 1 hour at a time by the end of the course. I was used to teaching 1.5 hours during my teaching practicum in university, but this was far more stressful and a whole lot more prep work than what I did for my TEFL cert in college. It didn’t help that it was during the deadly heatwave in Europe in 2003 where air conditioning is what they read about in books. On my course of twelve “candidates”, one fled after the first two days, supposedly after some scandalous remarks about her dress and accent, and two failed (one was a chemistry professor). The two people who passed were a Hungarian woman with a heavy accent and a jaded attitude and the other was a thumb-sucking 20-year-old who was still in school. Not quite sure what that says, but .
I was smart enough to go a week ahead of time to do the tourist thing and then stick around for another two weeks after I finished to do more touring around Europe to unwind. I think the stress would have done me in if I had gone straight from working here to doing the program after stepping off the plane. Having my bag stolen had a major effect on my lessons, in addition to staying with a family who turned out to have some serious race issues (and finding this out shortly before my bag was stolen). My scores went downhill after my second week when all this happened.
At any rate, it was a good experience overall and even after having spent years studying L2 acquisition from a linguistics standpoint in university, I learned a bit from my experience in London…such as don’t put your backpack down unless it’s chained to your ankle and just because a family has the same last name as you doesn’t mean they see you as anything more than a criminal deserving of police brutality because of the color of your skin…oh, and a little bit about planning lessons effectively so that there’s lots of practical time.
Seriously, though, I still use a lot of the planning and classroom management practices I learned and have applied it to teaching my language arts students. I still talk to one of the candidates, a Russian girl, with whom I became good friends. It certainly helped me get through my experience and we spent a lot of time reflecting on our time doing the CELTA.
And as for courses, unless you have an express reason for going to the UK to do your CELTA, such as aspirations to teach ESL in Europe, I would steer clear of the country. I thank the person who stole my bag with my Lonely Planet London inside. It was a sign from God that I would never have want to use it again.
Ah the CELTA. People often comment about how difficult it is and how much time they spend preparing for lessons, but there is very little comment why so many find it so intense, especially those who have taught ESL before.
The major aim of the CELTA, in my opinion, is not to cram a particular teaching methodology down your throat or to make you a completely competent ESL teacher. The purpose is to force teachers to reflect upon themselves, what they are doing in the classroom and the benefit their teaching has on their students.
I did my CELTA in Vietnam and I had taught ESL for several years before I took my CELTA. I went from thinking I was a very good teacher at the beginning of the course to, at the midpoint of the course, thinking there was no way I was going to pass.
When the one-on-one evaluation time came, I asked my tutor,
[quote=“asia_lover”]…The purpose is to force teachers to reflect upon themselves, what they are doing in the classroom and the benefit their teaching has on their students.
…I went from thinking I was a very good teacher at the beginning of the course to, at the midpoint of the course, thinking there was no way I was going to pass.
…the process made me an infinitely better teacher. [/quote]This is a great post. In a way this summarises a lot of what I feel when the perennial debate about the worthiness of EFL qualifications comes around. You made an excellent point that the CELTA course does not tell one “how to teach” but rather encourages one to reflect on one’s own teaching.
For me, a good teacher is one who constantly tries to improve and does not become complacent. Nobody is a “perfect” teacher. There is always room for improvement and this is what keeps the job interesting.
I think that you got the benefits you did from the CELTA course because you were willing to examine your own teaching and reflect on it in the light of the observation reports and the teaching theory you were studying.
I did the Trinity equivalent (Trinity Cert. TESOL) after finishing my BA. I was a bit cocky at that stage and hence did not benefit as much from the course at the time as I could have done. I have benefited a lot since then, however, by reflecting on the course; on the advice I was given and on the ideas we were introduced to. I have used the broad introduction to ELT theory that we were given as a springboard for further reading.
Perhaps it is better to do as you did: to have some classroom experience before doing the course.
But in any case; it is not the bit of paper in itself that is important so much as the opportunity for self-reflection and improvement that doing such a course provides. It may well be that there are teachers without any ELT qualification who teach better than some who have done a CELTA or equivalent but who have not taken the course seriously enough. Simply doing the course, however, provides a wider perspective on things that, even if not used properly at the time, can still be of benefit later on.
Will do. I’m waiting to find out if my sub-degree qualifications + CELTA will get me into a classroom for the year; otherwise I might as well jump straight into a degree followed by teacher training. Are they providing your accomodation too, BTW?
[quote=“daryl_ks”]seems to be properly cert. as I got the link from the Cambridge website locator.
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