What is a CELTA course like?

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Week 4

The last day but one of the course, and Rob knew he'd passed, though he'd have to wait till Monday or Tuesday of the following week to find out whether or not he'd got a "B". He was very keen to get one, as he could see it was a "competitive market out there" and wanted to be able to put that "B" on his CV.

The external assessor, from Cambridge, had been and observed one of his classes. He'd been "a little nervous" about that, but thought it went okay (it must have done!) and reckoned his tutor had been "just as nervous", which somehow made things easier. In fact, the assessor had been sick, and had to leave the room rather earlier than scheduled. No, Rob didn't think it was the content of his lesson plan!

Up to expectations

So had the CELTA course come up to expectations? Well, he'd had some previous experience of language schools, as an activities organiser, and said there were "virtually no surprises". He'd done some careful research on the course first (it certainly pays to find out what you are letting yourself in for!), and had found the information on our website spot on.

The course seemed to have covered "all the main areas", Rob thought. There were also sessions on working with people from countries like Japan, who may be unfamiliar with our alphabet, and one on teaching young learners. Maybe a session on teaching business English was missing?

If you land yourself a full time contract in a language school, the chances are you are going to be teaching kids. Rob's preference is for adults: "There are issues I'd prefer to avoid, such as behavioural ones, with kids," he says. "It's probably a question of developing techniques but it would probably be a challenge, especially for a young teacher with no experience."

The intense workload

He'd been told there would be a "huge workload", and certainly most nights he'd been at home planning his next lesson, but still said it "wasn't that bad". He'd also discovered something all of us see, sooner or later: spending 6 hours planning a lesson doesn't necessary produce a better lesson than one planned in 30 minutes. "You need a good idea, you need to visualise it before you start planning," Rob says, and doing that was part of the secret.

Had his fellow trainees found the course pretty much as they'd expected, too, I asked? "Well, some didn't realise they would be teaching on Day 2," Rob said and some hadn't realised they'd be writing assignments as well as doing teaching practice.

Rob finished his degree in June 2000; had the four-year gap meant that it had been hard to go back to writing essays? Rob didn't think so, though he confessed that he wasn't particularly good at getting his thoughts down on paper. The tutors were good on that one: you could let them see a draft and they'd show you which areas needed improvement. When the pressure started to build up, though, sometimes it was nice just to "submit it and forget it", Rob said.

Learning Spanish

Had the pressure meant he hadn't learnt much Spanish in the month he'd been here? Well, during the course Rob had not really had much time to practise, certainly, though he had learnt a good deal from a young Mexican lady (some of which he'd had to learn the local equivalents for, it should be said). But he said he would "definitely recommend" anyone doing the CELTA course here to do a short Spanish course of some kind first, if only to pick up the basic survival sort of vocabulary.

So what did Rob think he would be doing in 10 years' time? Perhaps not teaching, he said. He's in English teaching "principally to be able to travel round the world" and would like to spend time in South East Asia and Latin America.

He could see himself teaching, say, for five years or so. But TEFL, he said, isn't really a field in which many people make their way up a ladder ­ in many language schools there just isn't a ladder at all. Like most CELTA trainees, perhaps, he couldn't really see himself still teaching English 10 years from now ­ but who knows?

So what did he think he would be doing? Perhaps in the travel trade, tourism, he said. "My own sort of tour company would be nice!"

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