You might have noticed that things have been a little quiet over the past month on our The Ultimate Guide to CELTA blog. This is due to the fact that we’ve been busy with another intensive CELTA here in Munich and have been helping another great set of trainees through their course. Read on to find out what I took from this particular course!
- Trainees who are open to feedback, not only from their tutors but also from each other, progress a lot more quickly.
- An experienced classroom teacher is not necessarily always going to do better than someone who has never stood in front of a class before. Experienced teachers often have “bad” habits that need to be relearnt.
- Jo Gakonga’s YouTube videos are really useful for trainees to watch. I particularly like the ones on ccqs and echoing and these were two areas a couple of my trainees struggled with on this course. Jo, who runs ELTtraining.com also offers a preparatory language awareness course which trainees, especially native speakers, find very useful.
- Having to resubmit a written assignment should be used as a learning experience rather than a failure. On this course a trainee had to resubmit her first written assignment which was about why we teach reading skills. She told me after her resubmission that she found it really useful to have to resubmit because it made her look into the topic in more detail. In her previous experience, when essays were just given a grade she never really looked at them again and therefore didn’t learn from it.
- If you do have to resubmit a written assignment, more often than not it is because you have not included something you were asked to include, make a checklist for yourself after writing if you were not given one by your centre to ensure you have included everything.
- Native speakers are not necessarily better than non-native speakers at teaching! We see this time and time again- being a good teacher has nothing to do with your nationality!
If you’re mid or post CELTA, what would your tips be?
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