Imagine the scenario… You’re in class, checking answers to a gap fill activity on gerunds and infinitives.
Teacher: Sergio, number three please,
Sergio: He suggested going to the cinema.
Teacher: Yes, he suggested going to the cinema.
“What’s so wrong with that?” I hear you ask … Continue reading “Checking Answers and Giving Feedback”
On a CELTA course, you are expected to show you can reflect on your lessons; what went well as well as what you would do differently if you were to teach that lesson again. In fact one of the criteria Cambridge expects you to achieve is just that. As a CELTA tutor, I think there tend to be 4 types of self-evaluations – I wonder which one you would write?? Continue reading “Reflecting on your own teaching”
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”
The Ultimate Guide to CELTA 