Common CELTA Questions

Preparation is really important for your written assignments. Start them as soon as you receive the brief and don’t leave it until the last minute. You’ll then have lots of time to check your work against the instructions before submitting, and this will give you more time to spot any problems.

Your written assignments will expect you to use the new knowledge you have gained so far in your CELTA course, so be sure to refer to your notes and, very importantly, use the new terminology (e.g. learning styles, eliciting etc.)

If the worst happens and you fail an assignment, don’t worry – you will get a chance to re-do it using tutor feedback, and re-submit it.

Hi Karrie. Thanks for your kind words! CELTA centres have a professional image to maintain and British Council is one of the most highly respected names in the industry. It’s very likely they will get back to you soon. Why not try giving them a quick call and politely check that they received your application?

Hi Omid. I don’t have that kind of information, as it will be individual to each CELTA centre. It’s a great question however, and I’ll be sure to ask some CELTA tutors when I get chance.

A standard pass grade is a fantastic achievement and is certainly good enough for most language school jobs. A pass B or pass A will just help your initial job application a little bit.

Well this entire website and my newsletter is designed to help you on that journey. I suggest reading through all the guides here and signing up for the exclusive tips I send each week via the newsletter.

My 3 top tips for an A or B would have to be:

1) Demonstrate a growing independence in the second half of the course. By this, I mean you should be starting to become self-sufficient in your lesson planning and teaching. You can achieve this by really listening to your CELTA tutor’s advice and incorporating it immediately into that way you work.

2) Understand and react to the needs of your learners. This means noticing if they are struggling to grasp something; recognising if it requires attention immediately (i.e. mid lesson) or can be addressed individually with the student afterwards; and if necessary be confident enough to modify your lesson to address it. Regardless of your written lesson plan. Just be sure to properly explain yourself in your self-evaluation afterwards so your tutor can see your reasoning.

3) Smash your 4 assignments. Understand the briefs, study the examples, ask for tutor direction, and be sure to incorporate all the proper language you’ve learned up to that point (e.g. monitoring, eliciting, learning styles, L1 interference etc.)

4) An extra tip! Seriously, ask your tutor directly what you need to do to push your grade higher. “Hey Paul, honestly, in your opinion, what are the priorities I really need to work on to improve my chances of getting an A?” Some CELTA students from other cultures really struggle to ask such a simple question because they don’t want to be seen as arrogant. It’s not arrogant, and your not a school kid. You’re an adult training for a new career, and to be blunt, you’re paying a lot of money for help and guidance.

Good luck Anthony, don’t forget to report back to us!

What a fantastic question! I would certainly NOT recommend aiming to make your lessons very original or different – the point of the CELTA course is demonstrating that you can plan and teach a class using proven methods. Trying to be overly creative could backfire spectacularly.

When they refer to her creativity, they might be taking about her ability to adapt the teaching materials and help make them more engaging. I tried very hard to lift the activities from the (boring) textbooks and offer them to my students in ways that brought their focus towards using their skills. I know this sounds kind of vague right now, but you’ll understand more when you get started on the course. One example might be to re-type the new vocab and print them in a large font; that way they can be stuck to the board through the lesson as you encounter them – and they remain easily visible to your students.

So please please, don’t disregard the traditional teaching methods and try to be too original. Instead show your tutors that you understand them and can use them when appropriate, but that you can also anticipate the opportunities to improve your teaching material to help achieve your lesson aims.

Thanks for your kind words. I’m really happy to help.

All CELTA centres are closely assessed by Cambridge ESOL. They’ll teach the same core syllabus and the CELTA tutors are all assessed too, meaning that, in theory, the standard should be much the same regardless of where you study your CELTA course. In reality however, some tutors are just naturally better than others at improving students’ weak areas or communicating concepts in general. So although all CELTA centres will offer a minimum standard of course, I would recommend that you search for past graduate recommendations if available. I chose my CELTA centre on the back of a personal recommendation and I’m glad I did.

Here’s an in-depth post on choosing a CELTA centre

Books… I’d definitely recommend Murphy’s ‘English Grammar in Use’. Any good CELTA centre will have a library of books to use, but I’ve continued to use Murphy’s in many of my lessons. With regards to dictionaries, the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (OALD) is pretty good and their website is also useful as it provides the spoken phonemics for each work – perfect for your students’ pronunciation.

English teachers are always in demand – the industry is huge. Note that the demand is very seasonal for private schools, as they hire for their next intake of students. Summer is also a very busy time as a lot of foreign students visit the UK to study English and perhaps stay with a host family. Rates are not amazing for EFL teachers in typical private schools, but it’s a living salary and pretty much recession proof. The real money comes with teaching private classes or business classes.

That’s quite a complex question! You’ll teach 3 levels of learner: pre-intermediate, int, and upper-int. The pre-ints sometimes lacked the ‘meta language’ (this is the technical term you’re looking for) required to discuss the target language. It meant I had to dramatically reduce the range of vocab I used in their lessons, talk slower and over-pronounce a lot of words. Sometimes, a student simply couldn’t understand, even after I’d exhausted every way of explaining something. That was a big challenge. On the other side, the upper-ints were a lot of fun to teach, and they possessed enough meta language to discuss their lesson in depth and have a good laugh too.

Some learners – especially those who study at home from books – have strong grammar, but not much real-life communication fluency. Others might have learned listening and reading from the internet and movies, but not understand how to construct their own speaking and writing… recognising individuals’ needs is one of the key elements you’ll learn on the CELTA course.

Well, I’d obviously recommend the CELTA or Trinity equivalent. Without them, you’re competing against qualified teachers. If you mean what other ADDITIONAL things can you do to improve your career – classroom teaching experience is definitely the top of the list. Find out if you can be an unpaid classroom assistant for a while; you’ll make valuable contacts in the industry and pick up important skills.

Thanks for dropping by, Lesley. Keep us posted on your progress.

Hi Yvonne, have you read my CELTA application guide? It goes into some detail about the interview tasks. Remember that the tasks are for your CELTA centre to understand your starting point, and to get your thinking in terms of the course content. Just be honest in your interview tasks as they help your tutors to see your strengths and weaknesses. And don’t stress, the interview questions don’t count towards your CELTA grading at all!

Hi Mounir. There’s some samples in this CELTA interview article, but remember that all CELTA centres are free to write their own pre-course task, so your questions will be different. The questions will generally revolve around establishing your level of grammar understanding and your ability to identify and correct mistakes in sample texts. The CELTA pre-interview task is not part of your overall assessment; it’s there to help the tutors understand the level of support you might need during the course, and to help you understand your own strengths and weaknesses.

No problem… there’s a lot of useful tips in this article – CELTA interview tips

Lesson preparation makes a huge difference. The more you know your lesson plan and the activities your students will be doing, the less stressful teaching practice becomes. In fact, before my teaching lessons, I completed the book activities myself at home, so I knew exactly what my students were doing and I could mostly predict their difficult questions ahead of time.

Normally, most stress happens when the lesson deviates from your plan, and when you don’t know your source material.

Finally, I recommend you learn your students names and have a laugh with them! If they enjoy your lesson, then that positive energy will feed back into your own confidence.

Hi Laura. CELTA is always handy for finding work in Europe.

Are there any class tasks from previous courses to get an idea what im in for?

When you say class tasks, are you looking for the kind of activities that you will be teaching to learners? Or what you will learn in your studies with the CELTA tutors?

Is anything sent out before the class starts because teaching 12 on the second day sounds daunting to me!

It is daunting! But it’s best to get the first time out of the way early 🙂 Your CELTA tutor will assign you an activity before your first lesson, for example, you might have to take the learners through a listening exercise, or you might have to explain some grammar rules. But you’ll get some time to prepare beforehand. Think of the first lesson as the benchmark with which to measure your progress… it’s going to be stressful and feel like a disaster, but your learners know it’s your first time and will enjoy seeing you improve as the course progresses.

Hi Sarah, thanks for those book recommendations. I imagine teenagers are a challenging group to teach, depending on their motivations for learning. It’s great that someone has developed some textbooks specifically for them.

Hi Phil,

Congrats on getting through to the end. It’s a great feeling on that last day, isn’t it!

I’ll probably post my story in more depth later, but I was really only on track to get a standard Pass for the majority of the course. It wasn’t until the final 3rd that I really understood what was expected of me.

I believe the key is to:

Start incorporating all the new concepts and terminology into your lessons, and explicitly state so on your lesson plans (this helps your CELTA tutor to know when to expect them in your lesson.)

Don’t be a slave to your lesson plan. Many times I saw CELTA trainees fall apart in the lesson because things had deviated from their plan, and they felt panicked and unprepared. Instead, use your plan to demonstrate your intentions to your tutor (lead-ins, monitoring, eliciting, time estimates etc.) but learn to respond to the needs of the students as a priority. To put this into perspective, I scrapped a whole exercise mid-lesson because it was apparent the students didn’t have essential basic knowledge. But I was lucky enough to always include a backup activity in my lesson plans!

Evaluate your lessons properly! I can’t stress this enough. For example, if you show your tutor that you noticed a problem with X, and you decided to extend the grammar teaching as a result, then he/she won’t think that you just lost track of time and mark you down.

Assignments – Don’t waffle. Keep to the brief. Refer to your notes to use the correct terminology. Understand what core skills each assignment is designed to test. If in doubt, do your best draft early and ask your tutors for their thoughts. They’re not allowed to direct your assignments, but they may draw your attention to any glaring omissions.

Please do stop by and share your experiences with us. Perhaps you’d like to do a CELTA graduate interview with us?

David

Hi Konstantinos,

Well done, it sounds like you’re doing great! First thing… be sure to ask your CELTA tutor this question directly. Tell them that a Pass A is your goal and ask what you can do to improve your chances.

In general, if you’re getting S+ for all your teaching practices – including your lesson plans, which is very important – then you’re on your way for top marks. To work out your final grade, your CELTA tutor will assess your performance against a very big list of skills. This includes your ability to take on board feedback and your sensitivity to the learners’ needs.

Just make sure you use your lesson planning and self-evaluation to clearly state how you have incorporated areas of weakness from your tutor’s feedback. Don’t be shy about saying: My area of weakness was identified as too much teacher talking time (for example), so I intend to improve this by doing X in the lesson.

I only got S+ for the second half of the course, and I was awarded a solid Pass A. So I think you’ll be just fine 🙂

Hi Tina. IELTS score may be taken into consideration, but in general your English should be around level C1 (I think that’s around IELTS 7). Eligibility is usually assessed by completing some interview questions, sending them to the CELTA centre, and then discussing your answers on the phone (or Skype). So yes, there is a written element to CELTA eligibility, but no big essays 🙂

Hi Joy, that’s great to hear you’re booked onto the CELTA. I’m happy to help with any questions posted here – that way everyone can benefit as the website continues to collect answers for all CELTA trainees. No need for official payment!

Of course, if you do want to say Thank You, we’re now gratefully accepting donations from the button in the sidebar 🙂 This will help pay for website hosting and domain renewals etc.

Really interesting questions and I need to research this. I’ve heard lots of stories of people getting a Pass B with resubmits, but I can’t be completely sure about Pass A. I think you had better ask your tutor directly – and report back of course 🙂

Hi Chris. Thanks for dropping by. Not far to go now!

Great username from one of my favourite cities 🙂 There is a clear marking criteria for awarding a standard Pass grade, according to an complex matrix of skills you’re expected to learn and develop. However, achieving a Pass B or A is far less definable and includes more of a subjective decision by your tutors.

Remember a standard Pass covers a huge range of performance. It’s possibly to perform excellently and receive a standard Pass, and that’s absolutely a great achievement. I know it’s human nature to push for the highest marks, but a Pass B or A will only really help you at the very start of your career; beyond then it becomes less relevant compared to experience.

The best way I’ve heard it described to me is: in addition to meeting all the standard Pass criteria, Pass B and A students tend to demonstrate sensitivity to the needs of the learners (as individuals and as a class) beyond the limits of the lesson plan. They tend to develop good rapport with the class, to encourage a learning environment. And they tend to understand the narrative shape of a lesson (that’s a complex idea), in which they can lead their learners from the introduction of some new language right through to practicing and producing with it.

I recommend you directly ask your tutor what you need to do to push your grade higher.

Hi Maggie. That’s a difficult one for sure. It’s really bizarre to request an A-level if you already have a PGCE, a degree (both of which are higher than an A-level or a CELTA in the framework)If it were me in this situation, I would definitely not try to get an A-level as it wouldn’t help me in any other area of my life.

A CELTA would be much faster to acquire compared to an A-level of course. It’s likely your vacancy will disappear before you have any of the prerequisites. Is there no way you can write to the Monitoring Board about exceptional circumstances?

People with all types of academic backgrounds can do well teaching English. This is what makes English language teachers so unique – the fact they can each bring a different approach to the classroom. I know English teachers with previous backgrounds in corporate office work, insurance, fresh out of college etc. There’s no reason why your friend would struggle with a background in biology!

Depends on the type of teaching certificate. The important thing about the CELTA (and equivalents) is that is includes hours of real lesson planning and teaching practice in front of a live classroom. Be wary of certificates that have no practical element, as language schools don’t always accept them.

Hi Sadik. The Advanced Learner Loan Scheme applies only to centres on the approved list. The CELTA was only very recently accepted into the ALLS, so this really is the first wave of approved centres. I expect many more to become ALLS approved next year when they see how popular this is.

You may want to call the ALLS department of the Student Finances team and ask how you can encourage your CELTA centre to apply to be included. They may just not be aware of the opportunity yet.

Hi Mona. I visited Transylvania many years ago, and had a wonderful time in Romania!

Great question. While you are well qualified in English skills, you will still need to prove you can plan lessons and teach a class. This is why CELTA is primarily a teaching skills certificate.

Does that help?

Hi Lisa. Which bundles do you mean? Please let me know, and I’ll help you understand.