How to succeed on CELTA

Listen to your tutors and follow their instructions and advice

The easiest way to get off-track early in the course is to follow your own pre-conceptions and ideas about teaching, rather than
listening to what your tutors are trying to tell you. There is a lot of room for creativity in the rest of the course, but at the beginning
its very important to focus on the fundamentals of teaching and show your tutor that you have mastered them before moving on to
other things.

WARNING: Participants with teaching experience often make the mistake of relying on their past teaching habits while ignoring their
tutors instructions and advice. This usually creates obstacles, since those past habits may either conflict with what the tutor is trying
to tell them or trying to get them to focus on.

Prioritize your time

1. Teaching Practice
Focus your time on TP first, because it contributes more to your final grade than assignments.
1. Start planning early. You normally receive your instructions (TP points) for each lesson two days in advance. Ask
any questions you need to clarify what youre supposed to do and then try and complete #2-4 on the same day you
receive them.
2. Write an outline of what you intend to do in class (something concise and clear that you can refer to easily during
the lesson). In the first part of the course, use the TP points youre given, or a simplified version of them.
3. Prepare your materials. Consider how to make them as engaging and accessible as possible (do not re-invent, add
or alter materials unnecessarily in your first lesson or two). Can you cut, fold, use PowerPoint, or otherwise format
them to make them more interesting or easy to use?
4. Complete your language analysis. You should do this before writing the rest of your lesson plan, since the ideas
you get here will help you write a better plan.
5. Write your formal plan. In the first part of the course, you should only be paraphrasing the instructions you receive
in your TP points. Dont change the lesson for now. Focus on formatting your materials and executing good
classroom management during the lesson.
6. Sleep. Dont stay up all night touching up your lesson plan. The lesson you deliver is more important than whats on
paper, so if you have it all in your head, good materials, and a basic plan, get some rest to make sure you can
actually execute the lesson as well as you intended.
7. Come in early on your teaching day to prepare materials, check resources (e.g. projector, audio), etc. and rehearse
(e.g. in an empty classroom, with a peer).

2. Written Assignments
When youre satisfied with your next lesson, get to work on one of your upcoming assignments. These are only graded
pass/fail, and you have a chance to re-submit them, so dont sacrifice lesson planning time in order to make these perfect
on the first try. Re-submission does not impact your grade. Dont lose sleep the night before a TP lesson just to make a first
submission perfect.
1. Read the assignment instructions (on Moodle) carefully. Many assignments fail on the first submission because of
simple omissions.
2. Read the assignment grading rubric (on Moodle). Knowing how your assignment will be marked will help you avoid
any easy mistakes.
3. Research the topic of the assignment (e.g. the receptive skills chapter of a methodology book for assignment 3).
Knowing about the topic before you start writing will help avoid mistakes related to terminology, concept, etc.
4. Read the example assignment (on Moodle) to get a good idea of what a pass-level submission looks like.
5. Write a first draf that contains all the same components as the example assignment (dont use the example as an
outline or include similar tasks, etc. to avoid the risk of plagiarism).
6. Mark your own assignment with the grading rubric and make any necessary changes.
7. Give your assignment to a peer and ask them to mark it with the rubric. Getting fresh eyes to look over your work
often helps avoid many common reasons for resubmission (e.g. language errors).
8. Proofread carefully before you submit and upload your assignment on time.