CELTA course

The CELTA course is very intensive and hard work, but I learnt a lot over the course of the 4 weeks and came away with a Pass Grade B! I made some great friends on the course, especially among my TP (Teaching Practice Group).

CELTA trainees, April - May 2010

If you're thinking of doing a full-time CELTA course, you need to be prepared for long hours, a lot of hard work, being thrown into teaching (you teach a short lesson on the second day of the course, very daunting for those who had never taught before!) and to be observed and given feedback by both the tutors and your peers. A lot of the TP assessment will concentrate on lesson planning; the evenings before a teaching session were always spent doing very detailed lesson plans!

The timetable went something like this:

9.00 - 11.00 Teaching Practice

11.00 -12.00 Feedback

12.00 - 1.00 Lesson planning

2.00 - 5.00/5.30 Input sessions (seminars with the tutors concentrating on a certain topic, eg Teaching Pronunciation)

In addition, there are 4 written assignments to complete (approx. 1,000 words each).

However, it wasn't all work....some evenings (ie the ones with no lesson planning required) were spent at the Moskva Ter Bisztro across the road drinking 300Ft (less than £1) beers or meals out. Friday nights were spent at Godor (a vast underground bar near Deak Ferenc Ter) or Moskva Ter.

The only lowpoint for me was having a nasty bout of food poisoning around the end of Week 3 which left me unable to leave the flat and unable to keep any food down all weekend. I blame the dodgy Chinese takeaway...most of the Chinese takeaways here have buffet counters where you choose what you want and they stick it in the microwave to heat up, not the best way to deal with rice. Best to avoid!