Category: ccqs

CCQs vs Eliciting questions- what’s the difference?

The post discusses the importance of appropriate questioning techniques in CELTA courses to meet Cambridge’s criteria. Key distinctions between eliciting questions and Instruction Checking Questions (ICQs) are highlighted, emphasizing that eliciting questions uncover students’ prior knowledge, while ICQs verify students’ understanding of newly presented content. The common mistake of attempting to elicit unfamiliar subject matter is also addressed.

If you are currently doing a CELTA course or have already completed one, you may already be familiar with criteria reference number 5g:

5g using a range of questions effectively for the purpose of elicitation and checking of understanding

use questions for:

  • setting context
  • building up information
  • assessing learners’ prior knowledge
  • checking meaning of language items
  • checking understanding of instructions

Source: Cambridge Assessment English, CELTA 5

Continue reading “CCQs vs Eliciting questions- what’s the difference?”

13 Ways to Present Lexis

 

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“Variety is the spice of life.” CC2.0

The American athlete, Hank Stram’s philosophy of “Simplicity plus variety” is certainly one that could be applied to introducing new lexical items to students. Some traditional ways of presenting lexis are still very useful, after all, do we really need to reinvent the wheel? Here we have a selection of new as well as old methods for introducing new lexis .. Continue reading “13 Ways to Present Lexis”

A Guide to Lesson Planning: Language Analysis

In order to teach a specific item of language, for example a tense or a lexical set, it is essential that you, as the teacher, “know” this item thoroughly which is why on a CELTA course you are asked to include a language analysis on the lesson plan. What does this include and what do you need to consider? Here, in this third post in the series on lesson planning, we have the answers to these and other questions all about language analysis. Continue reading “A Guide to Lesson Planning: Language Analysis”

Dealing with Feedback

I completed my CELTA course before it was normal to carry a laptop around so all of my lesson plans and written assignments were handwritten, I am only telling you this so that you can get an idea of just how long ago it was….

I thoroughly enjoyed the course and loved my fellow trainees as well as 50% of the tutors (there were 2 tutors on the course).  Now that I am a CELTA tutor myself, I often think back to my course and reflect on why I didn’t warm to the other tutor – I think it was probably just down to a clash of personalities.  The tutor I liked (X) was the one whose feedback was perhaps more critical but it was delivered in the nicest possible way, we were able to laugh at the things that had gone wrong in the classroom.  The other tutor (Y) was probably the more positive one in feedback but now that I think about it, I believe I was a bit more resistant to Y’s feedback.  The two tutors were completely different types of teacher and I was aiming to be like X but I now realise that I was being unfair to Y, I let our personality clash get in the way of learning from a very experienced trainer (not that she would have known, I never voiced my feelings).

So, as a trainee, how should you deal with feedback? Continue reading “Dealing with Feedback”

Concept Checking Questions (CCQs)

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© The Ultimate Guide to CELTA

When presenting new language we have to be able to check that the students have understood the meaning, one way of doing this is to ask CCQs.

Unfortunately our trainees often struggle with CCQs so I am going to attempt to simplify them here for you. Continue reading “Concept Checking Questions (CCQs)”