CELTA is an internationally recognised professional teaching qualification that is common in the field of teaching English as a foreign or second language. The course is designed for potential teachers with little or no classroom experience and is therefore considered an entry level qualification in English language teaching. The fundamental specifications of the course are provided by Cambridge ESOL which is a branch of the University of Cambridge.
CELTA Course
The length of the course is 120 contact hours (6 hours a day over 20 days for the full time CELTA). In order to be eligible for the award of a certificate, candidates are required to:
- Attend and 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 course covers the following areas:
- 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)
An integral part of the course, OTP is undertaken in small groups of English language learners. A total of 6 hours’ assessed teaching practice is the requirement over the course which may be divided into a number of lessons lasting 40, 45 or 60 minutes. Feedback sessions, led by the course trainer who has been observing you, follow each OTP session and are also a key component of the course. Reflection on your teaching is part of the learning process on the course and you will be expected to contribute to the feedback on yourself and others.
Written assignments
These are the ‘Focus on the learner’ (which encourages you to find out about your learners’ backgrounds, needs and purposes in learning), the ‘Language related task’ (a review of your growing language awareness), the ‘Language skills related task’ (in which you consider how you could use an authentic text in the classroom) and the ‘Lessons from the classroom’ (in which you reflect on your strengths and weaknesses over the course). It is one of the requirements for a pass grade that you pass 3 out of the 4 assignments, but you are allowed to re-submit any or all of them if you don’t get it quite right first time.
Observation of experienced teachers
4 hours of this will be observation of your trainers teaching your TP students. The remaining 2 hours may be made up of video observations of particular lesson types, which are timetabled into the input sessions.
Maintaining your portfolio
Your portfolio will need to contain a lesson plan for every lesson you teach in OTP together with your self-evaluation of it and the trainer’s written evaluation, your completed written assignments and finally, your CELTA 5, a record-keeping booklet in which you record, amongst other things, the times of your teaching practice and observations of experienced teachers and a summary of your progress as discussed with your trainer in your mid-course tutorial.
Course fees
The total price is divided into: deposit and balance.
The deposit may be paid via a) credit card b) PayPal c) wire transfer d) Western Union.
The balance of the course fee must be paid by cash, PayPal or bank transfer directly to the training center on the first day of the course.