When I started my EFL career, I took a TEFL course that had both an online and classroom component and was about a month long. There were a couple projects that we had a week to complete (for each project), one lesson plan that we had to write, and maybe a handful of days when we actually go to practice teaching. I was able to work full-time and have a bit of a social life while taking this course. After a few years of teaching, I decided to take some time off, travel a bit and take the CELTA course. There was a lot of laughing, late nights, crying and a few meltdowns, but overall completely worth the time and effort as it made me a much better teacher, and confident that I had the skill set to rise to any teaching job.
Despite the fact that I had a job in China
lined up for post-course, I chose to take my CELTA course at International House in Lima, Peru. As I was taking a few months off, I really wanted to spend some time traveling in South America, which would eventually land me in Lima for my course and 2 additional weeks of post course travel in Peru. Conveniently, my aunt lives in Lima about a 10-minute walk from International House in Miraflores. This also cut out the expense of accommodation, who doesn’t love a money saver?The CELTA course I took was a full-time in person course, there are some distance and online/in-class combo options available from various language schools, in person is the most beneficial to improve your teaching. I had class Monday – Friday from 9am – 5pm, like I said full-time, the day was divided up between teaching practice and observations in the mornings with lectures, demos and lesson planning taking up the afternoon sessions. To pass the CELTA you need to write and teach eight lesson plans and complete four written assignments. The course had twelve students and two tutors, we (the students) were divided into two groups of six and spent 2 weeks with each of the tutors. International House is an English language school in Lima and had arranged for two groups of guinea pig adult students for us to hone our teaching skills on, these students were divided into two groups based on their English level, advanced and intermediate. My fellow CELTA candidates were both experienced and brand-new teachers, as well as being both native and non-native speakers of English. The CELTA is open to non-native English speakers with a C1 proficiency, I explore this more in my article on teaching EFL for non-native speakers (coming soon).
Morning Sessions
During the morning sessions, we were
divided into separate groups with the volunteer students and our tutor for teaching practice and observations. On Mondays, we observed our tutor teaching and practiced our constructive observation and teacher feedback on his teaching. Tuesday – Friday the CELTA candidates taught and gave peer feedback, conducted sel-evaluations on our teaching, and our tutor provided feedback. I found the feedback and self-evaluations to be invaluable in improving my techniques and style in the classroom, you are also able to pull ideas from watching the other candidates teach. CELTA candidates teach a one-hour lesson covering different skills two times a week, so there are three students teaching each day…you get really good at time management.
Afternoon Sessions
After lunch we reconvened in one group with both tutors, typically there would be a lecture that had one or both of the tutors mock teaching with us as students to demonstrate teaching with various styles of lesson plans, different skills, and even the phonetic alphabet, which I wasn’t very comfortable with prior to the CELTA course, but utilize all the time now. The afternoon was also when we’d receive our teaching topics and have time to lesson plan, on our own and with the help from a fellow student who was not teaching the next day, yes, you got your teaching material less than 24 hours prior to teaching. This resulted in a lot of late nights, when I was lesson planning, I never went to bed prior to midnight and ingested a high amount of coffee, even by my standards. For lesson planning, we were provided with a skill to teach and a few pages from a textbook, that we could use or not use at our discretion.
Lesson Planning & Teaching Practice
To complete the CELTA course, candidates have to plan and teach eight lessons. For the first seven lessons, the skills or functions that you are teaching are assigned, for your final lesson plan and teaching practice you get to choose what skill/function that you want to teach. It is encouraged that you teach one that you have not done previously; or use a teaching format that you have not used. I had some previous lesson planning experience prior to taking the CELTA course, but the lesson planning we did during the course and I have continued with post-CELTA is much more detailed and in-depth. It also made better prepared in the classroom and a better teacher, because I was better prepared. The lesson planning was also very time and labor intensive, I mentioned that there were a lot of late nights (like a whole month of them) mostly because of lesson planning. While we were provided with a skill to teach and textbook pages with exercises, texts and audio clips, these were all optional to use and we were encouraged to create our own material as well. Lesson plans included
Written Assignments
Another component of the CELTA are the written assignments, that are designed to help candidates better understand and analyze different components of teaching. The assignments cover four topics: analyzing and responding to adult learner needs, analyzing language for teaching purposes, teaching language skills, reflecting on classroom teaching. All the assignments are quite involved and require a lot of research, for example, the first project has you partner with one of the volunteer students to analyze their skills and needs as a language learner. This entails interviewing the student and observing them in the classroom to pick up on errors, strengths and weaknesses. That all happens in the first week of the course. It can be quite intense, especially when revising an assignment is happening in the same week as doing a completely different assignment AND you’re doing lesson plans. You do need to pass all the written assignments to complete the CELTA course, if you don’t pass on the first submission, the tutors do provide very specific comments on what you need to change or fix and you get the chance to complete those and resubmit it.
Final Thoughts
If you’re thinking of taking the CELTA course, I highly recommend taking it in person. The friendship and support from the other candidates, was invaluable in making it through the course mentally and emotionally. Having peers to bounce ideas off for lesson planning and getting to see them teaching was a great learning tool. It also provided much needed emotional support, like most of the other teachers in my group, I had prior teaching experience, but inevitably we all tended to be nervous before our teaching practices. I also had a bit of a meltdown in the middle of week three, complete with tears, this is the most stressful week of the CELTA due to having two assignments due plus lesson plans, and the support of my course mates (shout out to Gabriel) helped me to get myself together.
We also went out to lunch or dinner together and when we needed a mental break would hang out on the weekends. No matter if you’re a new teacher or an experienced, native or non-native speaker, the CELTA course will help you improve your skills and give you an EFL/ESL certification that is considered the standard, so that you can stand out to potential employers. When it comes to EFL/ESL certifications, the CELTA is by far the only one I recommend.
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