Merry Christmas from TUGToC!
At around this time of year, I am always looking for a nice holiday lesson to send everyone off for their Christmas break, feeling warm and fuzzy inside. For the past couple of years I have been just about to jet off somewhere exotic for a few weeks to get away from the dreaded flu season. Unfortunately that won’t be the case this year.
Whether you are teaching solely online or managing to combine your online lessons with some socially distanced, face to face teaching as I am, technology is where it’s at. My top five ELT tools change regularly depending on what I’ve read/ heard about recently but in no particular order here are my top 5 at the time of writing …
Is there a difference between classroom teaching and online teaching?
At the beginning of March 2020 I wouldn’t have been qualified to write about teaching (English) online but with grim thanks to a pandemic I was forced into becoming au fait with the online world a lot quicker than I might have wanted to. Is there much of a difference?
Here in our CELTA Centre in Munich we are about to start our first fully face-to-face CELTA course since Covid-19 put us all into lockdown. Amanda and I have had to think carefully about how to do this safely for all involved.
Many of you will have seen that Cambridge is offering the CELTA course fully online during these strange times, something which has never been possible before. So what are the advantages and disadvantages or is this a purely win-win situation?
There may only be a small number of people who fail CELTA but don’t let yourself be one of the minority. Read on to find out some of the reasons for people failing the course so that you can avoid these pitfalls.
In our centre in Munich our fail rate is particularly low but, as with many centres, we do have our share of fail candidates. But why?
Continue reading “Why do people fail CELTA?”I often read or hear from trainees that their aim is to achieve a Pass A when doing CELTA. So what exactly is the best way to go about this?
When I decided to do the CELTA course many years ago, I was living in Germany at the time but looking for a way to return to the UK. I did some research and decided to apply to International House in Newcastle. I had never been to Newcastle before but relished the opportunity to embark on what turned out to be a very challenging four weeks in a place where I would be alone and have no distractions. I wasn’t disappointed.
Looking for a nice final lesson before Christmas?
On our most recent CELTA course in Munich, some of the trainees seemed to have a problem with the stages a lesson should include so I’ve tried to break down the basic stages for different lesson types.
Continue reading “A Guide to Lesson Planning: Basic Stages”