CELTA Teaching Practice

1. Don’t plan too much

By this I mean, don’t plan to do a million different activities or lists and lists of new vocabulary. One of the biggest mistakes I found most CELTEEs make is including too much for a short lesson. Remember you will be teaching 8 lessons over the course of the and we need to curb our enthusiasm a bit and reclassify what it means to give a quality lesson. One thing I found helpful was to use frameworks to organize my stages in the lesson and limit the amount of target language I wanted to introduce to the class. 

2. There is always two sides

What I mean by this is when you give a lesson there will always be positives and negatives to everything that you do in the class. Unfortunately AND fortunately for you, the course is about growth and development as a teacher, so, your tutor will highlight things you did wrong and things you did correctly. You need to be prepared to receive all of that type of feedback and not just be told that your lesson was good. You’ll limit yourself to thinking that there’s no room for improvement. Remember: the tutors are not trying to criticize you, they are trying to give you CONSTRUCTIVE criticism so you are able to develop your teaching skills.

3. Anticipate problems

 This was an area that I was unfamiliar with or not very trained at before doing CELTA. It's something novice or inexperienced teachers (even experienced teachers) don't take into consideration while they're doing lesson planning. Your lesson plan is going to be more detailed then probably what you're used to preparing for normal classes. Because the preparation is more intensive, you need to include anticipated problems. My recommendation for this is to anticipate problems of your target language for meaning, form, pronunciation, and appropriate see. When doing your language analysis and developing your anticipated problems this will help you be better prepared to teach your lesson and to resolve issues that come up during the lesson. A few books that can help you with anticipating problems are:

-Learner English

-ABC of Common Grammatical Error for learners and teachers

4. Make your materials professional-looking

Whether you're teaching your lessons online or in person your materials for the Celta program need to look professional. There's no exception to this. You will be evaluated by the presentation of your materials and you should take a look at how you're delivering the activities, what you want the students to focus on, and what information will be confusing for them to complete an activity successfully. Personally, I liked to have smaller and divided worksheets or different slides separating all of the material. It allowed me to control what information the students were looking at and focus their attention on the task at hand. Your materials should look nice. It should be pleasant and a fun experience to do the activities, so if you look at your materials and you see that they don't quite meet the standard, spend the extra time and make them look nice because it does matter for your grade and for the student.

5. Get comfortable with the phonemic chart

 Although I am a native English speaker, I was never formally trained on using the phonemic chart or transcription. This is something that even today I am uncomfortable with and I continuously work at.  If you've never used the phonemic chart I definitely recommend that you become at least somewhat familiar with it before taking the course. It will help you immensely because you will be required to use transcription in your classes and in your class materials. And you will be expected to provide the proper phonological models for the students. There are a few references I recommend:

-Adrian Underhill YouTube video

-Sound Foundations

-Teaching Pronunciation

-Higor Cavalcante’s Book for BP Speakers

My suggestions are based on things that I struggled with at the beginning of the course (or still do now). Every teacher is different and every teacher has their own set of strengths and weaknesses. If some of the things I listed above you really excel in, awesome! Use it to your advantage. If not, be okay that we all have personal development points to work on.