安雅英文｜Post-CELTA｜ 10 tips for passing CELTA course successfully－Anya English 安雅英文

Back to work-mode! It must be jet lag! I couldn’t fall asleep right now… It’s nearly 4am… Gosh! I've just passed my CELTA course at Hampstead school of English in London this summer and here I’d like to share some of my thoughts and tips for those who want to take the course in the future.

The most important point is to stay organised! The course itself is quite intensive. You will be given piles of work to finish and lots of deadlines to meet within normally four weeks if you are on a full-time one. (I've got three TPs and 2 written assignments to work on week three alone )

So, here we go:

1. Get yourself fully prepared before every TP, which means you’ve got to spend lots of time on your lesson plans: avoid last-minute work and never expect to come up with ideas off the cuff. Remember to rehearse before teaching. This truly helps calm you down and boost your confidence when you have to speak in front of groups of students/ fellow trainees and tutors.

2. A picture is worth a thousand words. During CELTA, avoid explaining verbally. Instead, using pictures/ drawings/ charts and realia wisely simply because they speak for themselves. :)

3. Reduce TTT ALL THE TIME!! TTT means Teacher Talking Time, and this is a bad thing here. It sounds tricky I know but, before taking this, I always thought it was teachers’ duty to talk and lecture, yet usually, students benefited more as they talked/discussed more during class. The more they were involved, the more they learnt/ enjoyed. Reducing TTT has always been written in my personal. (I was told not to jump in to finish sts’ sentences, just LET THEM TALK- teachers' job is to monitor and correct) lol

4. MFP, MFP, MFP!!! That’s a point that can never be overemphasised. lol Always bear the Meaning- Form- Pronunciation cycle in mind when teaching new vocabulary/ grammar. Giving a meaning/ concept first helps sts form a basic picture of what you’re gonna talk about next; then try eliciting the form from sts instead of giving away right answers; finally, teaching pronunciation with drilling/ phonetic symbols.

5. Setting up tasks clearly by staging your instructions. Do not set more than one task at a time. Gestures and demonstrations are useful here as well; it attracts more attention than merely talking.

6. Grade your language. Within four weeks, you’ll be asked to teach two different levels of groups. Each group has its own difficulties and challenges. Sometimes it’s easy for new teachers to forget to simplify their language down to the level or oversimplify. Either will cause troubles.

7. Work on reference books recommended by your school in advance. If you are a native-speaker or never learn grammar rules in your whole life, I highly recommend that you start studying some basic teaching methodology/ grammatical structure as early as possible because you won’t have too much time to learn them since there are always new tasks coming in.

8. Get to know your students/ different learning styles (visual, auditory and kinaesthetic) and activities. Nominating is a good way to build rapport. Try to observe your sts whenever possible to understand their preferred ways of learning and adjust the activities accordingly to make your lesson more effective/ enjoyable. It’s your work to avoid strong sts dominating the conversation by encouraging weak ones to talk more. (Pairwork sounds like a fair solution all the time)

9. Be a team-player. Work as a team in your group. I loved it when I could freely exchange notes/ ideas with my team members after course/ during lunch-breaks without fearing others might hide something from you. The more you communicate, the more you benefit. I love and miss my team members~~ hahaha

10. Just follow the instructions. Your trainers will provide you with many assistants/ useful techniques; they will guide you how to write a well-structured and effective lesson plan with a template designed by Cambridge. Simply trust and follow it as it’s been used/experimented for many years and of course it works! No need to invent a new one on your own at all.