CELTA Course
This course involves 120 contact hours, which equates to 6 hours a day for 20 days if you enrol on the full time CELTA. To successfully complete the course you will need to:
- Attend and fully participate in the course
- Complete 6 hours of teaching practice
- Observe 6 hours of lessons taught by experienced teachers
- Submit 4 written assignments
- Maintain and submit a portfolio of course work (i.e. lesson plans, self-evaluations, etc.)
Course Content
The CELTA course covers the following subjects:
- Language Analysis and Awareness
- The Learner, the Teacher and the Learning/Teaching Context
- Planning for Effective Teaching
- Classroom Management Skills
- Teaching Procedures and Techniques
- Resources and Materials
- Professional Development
- Classroom Observation
- Teaching Practice
Observed Teaching Practice (OTP)
OTP is one of the most important parts of the course and is undertaken in small classes of genuine English language students. The overall course requirement is 6 hours of assessed teaching practice which may be divided into several lessons of between 40 and 60 minutes duration. Following every lesson you will receive extensive feedback from the course trainer who has observed your lesson. These periods of reflection are also an important part of the learning process and you will be expected to contribute in every feedback session.
Written assignments
The course also requires you to complete 4 written assignments, 3 of which must receive a passing grade to receive certification (you are able to re-submit any or all of the assignments if they are not passed the first time). The four assignments are:
- Focus on the Learner, which encourages you to find out about your learners’ backgrounds, needs and purposes in learning
- Language Related Task, which is a review of your language awareness
- Language Skills Related Task, where you consider how to use an authentic text in the classroom
- Lessons from the Classroom, where you reflect on your strengths and weaknesses over the course
Observation of experienced teachers
This section involves 6 hours of teacher observation. 4 hours will be spent observing your course trainers teaching local students, while a further 2 hours will consist of video observations of specific lesson types.
Maintaining your portfolio
Your portfolio forms an overall record of your participation on the course. It will contain lesson plans from every lesson you teach, as well as your self-evaluation and trainer’s evaluation of each OTP session. Other documents in the portfolio include your written assignments and your CELTA 5 which is a record-keeping booklet where you record details such as the times of your teaching practice and observations of experienced teachers and progress reports from your mid-course tutorial.
Trinity Course
Course Content
The course is divided into five distinct units. Units 1, 2, 3 and 5 are delivered and marked by the in-house course tutors. External moderation is conducted by a member of the Trinity moderator’s panel at the end of each course. Unit 4 is also externally assessed by a moderator.
The five course units are:
Unit 1: Teaching skills, assessed through:
- Tutors’ evaluation of six hours of teaching with real learners
- A journal including trainees’ own lesson plans, with self- and tutor-evaluation
- A journal covering trainees’ reflective comments following observation of four hours of ESOL teaching by experienced teachers
Unit 2: Language awareness including grammar and phonology, assessed through:
- A test or practical project
- Ongoing use of spoken and written English
Unit 3: Learner profile, assessed through:
- The preparation of a simple linguistic profile and needs analysis, including some basic phonemic transcription, of a single learner
- The planning of, and reflection on, a one-to-one lesson
- The preparation of recommendations for the learner’s future language development
Unit 4: Materials assignment, assessed through:
- Written rationale for the development of one piece of teaching material
- Written evaluation of use of this in classroom teaching
- Interview with a Trinity moderator to discuss the above and the ways in which materials development is beneficial to the development of teaching skills
Unit 5: Unknown language, assessed through:
- A journal covering trainees’ reflective comments on four hours’ tuition in an unknown language from the point of view of the beginner, including an analysis of the key aspects of methods and classroom management that affect the learner positively and negatively
The main ongoing themes of the course are professional awareness and development. Those who successfully complete the course will have demonstrated an awareness of the needs of other team members, both teaching and non-teaching related, and the necessity of mutual support in an educational environment.
It is also necessary to demonstrate an awareness of the need for professional development during the course and once it is completed, based on a constructive response to input and feedback from the in-course tutors and fellow course participants.
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