What happens in a CELTA course : Week 1
CELTA ( Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults) is a teacher training course that gives you skills to teach English if you have little or no English teaching experience.
Trainees - people like me who are undergoing this training course
Tutors/Instructors - People who train us how to teach English
Teaching Practice ( TP) sessions - Trainees are expected to teach English everyday to Volunteer Students
(Volunteer) Students - People who wish to learn English and attend the Teaching Practice sessions
Day 1, 05 Nov
1330 hrs - Its lunch time but trainees are already preparing for for the intro sessions with the students coming up in a while. Good news is that the tutors have told us, “It’s really difficult to to fail CELTA”. Aahh! Releived!
1930 hrs - On my way home. The intro session with students went well. But after that it was an information overload. It may be difficult to fail CELTA. But completing it will definitely be a challenge. Our Teaching Practice sessions start post lunch tomorrow.
Day 2, 06 Nov
0945 hrs - The instructor has been blabbering away in German for 30 mins now. And I though this was a English teaching course. WTH???? But we (none of us who know German) have understood every word of it. Awesome fun this activity was.
1230 hrs - Its the first TP session in a couple of hours and are people nervous or what????
1730 hrs - Great first TP session. There is a sense of relief among those who are done with their TP session. My TP session is scheduled for tomorrow.
Day 3, 07 Nov
1700 hrs - “You should smile/You weren’t smiling at all”, that’s the unanimous feedback from my fellow trainees as well as instructors. Other wise a fairly strong lesson. My first TP session. Nice!
Day 4, 08 Nov
1745 hrs - We’re warned by our instructors ( with almost similar sounding names) on Day 1 that a few days down the line we’d start swapping their names. Its begun! One of the trainees was also found to be totally dazed. Now I understand what it meant when they said it would be very ‘intense’.
Day 5, 09 Nov
1830 hrs - First written assignment due tomorrow. There is a lot of activity happening among the trainees wrt first assignment. I have not even started. Don’t know why am so chilled out? And can’t beleive that Week 1 of CELTA is over. Time flies.