Monitoring – What? Why? When? How?

On a recent course, getting a balance in monitoring caused our trainees some problems. Let’s look at what it is exactly, why and when we need to do it and how it should be done …

Continue reading “Monitoring – What? Why? When? How?”

Lesson Plans: Troubleshooting

Lesson planning is such a major part of teaching, if you have a thorough lesson plan, you should be able to sit back and enjoy the lesson, while the learners do all the work! Read on for some tips on how to perfect your plans!

Continue reading “Lesson Plans: Troubleshooting”

In it for the learners!

I’m sorry to say that EFL teaching is not going to make you a millionaire! Having said that, most of us do not do it (just) for the money but get huge satisfaction from helping our learners. It seems obvious, therefore, that these learners should be at the forefront of our minds when planning and delivering lessons. Indeed, on the CELTA course, one of the criteria for a Pass A is that the candidate has a very good awareness of their learners but what exactly do we need to know about them and why?

Free from Pixabay.com, No attribution required
Continue reading “In it for the learners!”

How to Achieve a Pass A on your CELTA Course

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?

Continue reading “How to Achieve a Pass A on your CELTA Course”

The Perfect Trainee

In my previous post I talked about a difficult trainee but I don’t want to harp on only about negatives because that’s not what I’m about.  I have seen many genuinely lovely people walk through our doors who have gone out into the teaching world and done very well for themselves because they had at least some elements of my idea of a perfect trainee.  I don’t want to single anyone out here so instead I would like to list some qualities of what I consider to be required to be a perfect trainee. Continue reading “The Perfect Trainee”

A Difficult Trainee

I have been working as a CELTA tutor for over eight years now and I am pleased to say that I can still, just about, count my bad experiences with trainees on one hand.  That’s not to say there has only been five trainees who have annoyed me, there have been many more of those but they were all likeable in their own way.

Continue reading “A Difficult Trainee”