How CELTA Changed my Pedagogical Perspective

Those who know and had experienced CELTA can relate to a positive change in their teaching career.

What does CELTA mean, by the way? It stands for Certificate of English Language Teaching for Adults. If you are a language teacher, it is your great advantage to earn a CELTA certificate because you can use it to apply for English teaching jobs abroad as some companies require such qualifications to teach English specifically to non-native English speakers.

Why take the CELTA course? 

If you aim to be a globally competitive English language teacher, the course is suitable for you. It can help you acquire the teaching job you desire to have. This intensive training usually lasts for a month where assignments and teaching practice are done. The best part of it is learning new teaching strategies in the ESL classroom and designing your own lesson to have a fun and interactive class.

How did this course change my pedagogical perspective?

Before the training, I knew that the course is not easy as there might be a lot of inputs, teaching practices, assignments, and re-submissions all throughout. What a trainee should be afraid of is to fail the training. It is an expensive course that one has to take seriously so as not to waste their money.

Sleepless nights

CELTA actually is my way of enhancing my language teaching skills and putting them into practice. As a language teacher, it is my advantage to have learned new techniques in language teaching and strategies to employ in the classroom. Injecting varied interactive activities where pair and group work occur is one of the lessons I learned during the training. Getting your students involved in the lesson without you being with them as they do the task is another way to make your lesson more student-centered. Of course, your monitoring and facilitating should always be present.

Teaching Practice

In this training, I found out that teacher talk should be lesser, regardless of the students' level. As a teacher, you have to be more aware of each of your student's language needs. Language grading is important. Your students' level varies, so you have to be conscious of the language you use to suit their needs as learners.

In addition, it is not always enough to make your students speak just by asking them conversation questions and letting them talk about them just to say that they are practicing their speaking skills. Actually, if one student speaks, another student waits which sometimes makes them bored and the lesson boring. Some students might get tired of answering those conversation questions. It is always better to do pair or group work.

Teaching Practice Materials

Giving of instructions that are not wordy is something that a language teacher should take note of. Clear and simple instructions are absolutely good. Instead of repeating them many times, ask ICQs (Instruction Checking Questions) to know if learners understand them. Conveying and checking the meaning of a target language is one of the hardest parts of teaching as you have to be more careful and aware of the meaning, pronunciation, and form. Asking CCQs (Concept Checking Questions) is the best way to convey the meaning including timelines which are sometimes difficult to explain if you are not knowledgeable of your target language.

My takeaway?

In the lesson, you should always have a clear focus, be it a language skill or a system. There are a lot of things to consider when teaching English to learners with various proficiency levels.

Before, I taught my students purely by asking questions and relying on handouts. Now, it all changed because of my CELTA experience. It is always best to undergo intensive training similar to this course.