CELTA From a Trainee's Perspective

We often hear teacher training centres telling us what the CELTA course is like, what to expect from it and what we will learn on the course. Centres also tell us why we should do the course at their centre. What we rarely hear about is what the CELTA course is like from a trainee’s perspective. In this blog post, you can read about what the course is like for those taking part, giving you a real idea of what to expect should you decide to take part in the course. With feedback from past trainees, we will give you a taste of what course is really like.

The first word that comes to mind for most former trainees is intense. This is especially true if you take part in the four-week intensive course. In this time, trainees can expect a full-time schedule including teaching practice, input sessions, lesson planning and feedback. On the four-week course trainees spend all day, every day at the centre during the week and also have to work on lesson plans and assignments in the evenings and at the weekend. Former trainee Facundo encapsulates this idea very well. When asked about the main challenges of the CELTA course, he responded saying “lesson planning was quite tough. Sometimes I had to stay up till late and it was difficult the next day to teach without having slept that much”.

Another comment from a lot of former trainees is that standing in front of people and teaching for the first time was a new and often challenging experience. If you have never done this before, standing in from of a class can be quite a lonely place and you can feel very nervous and uncomfortable. This, of course, gets easier the more you do it, but it is something that many trainees find really difficult at the start. Orlagh, another former London School of Languages trainee said, “I found it quite difficult speaking in front of people, but by the end of the course I personal felt more and more comfortable doing that”.

Other trainees have described how they feel like they are thrown into the deep end on the CELTA course. This is due to the fact that trainees have to teach from the second or third day of the course. This is an important element of the course and allows trainees to start teaching as soon as possible and to have enough time to really develop their teaching skills as the course goes on. This view was shared by Loida, another former trainee when she said “we were teaching from, I think, it was the third day, so I could overcome my lack of confidence just by practising. So, with all the teaching practice, by the end of the course I felt much more confident”.

“You have to know your stuff” or learn it very quickly, is another comment that you will often hear from former CELTA trainees. You need to make sure that your grammar knowledge is good and that you feel confident in this in order to teach this to other people. Otherwise, that lonely place at the front of the classroom will feel even lonelier when you are struggling to clarify a tricky grammatical structure or piece of vocabulary. Past trainees have talked about how important it is to be prepared in this situation and how you feel much more confident as a teacher when you are well-prepared. This was summed up nicely by Cristina when she said, “for me the course has been a learning process on really knowing how the language is structured, and then also how to teach it at the same time”.

Deadlines are something else that a lot of trainees mentioned when asked about their experiences on the course. Not only do trainees have to complete lesson plans for the classes that they teach, but they also have to write 4 assignments that need to be submitted on time. In fact, when asked about the biggest challenges on the CELTA course, Facundo answered with one word: “deadlines”. This means that trainees need to plan their time well to ensure that they have enough time for planning their lessons and to submit their assignments on time.

So, we have read about how difficult, intense and challenging the CELTA course can be, but how do trainees feel about the course overall once they have completed it and would they recommend it to others? The most frequently used word to describe the CELTA course is rewarding. With many trainees saying that despite challenges the course presents, they learnt so much and would definitely do it all over again. Jorge, another former trainee described the feedback that he received during the course on his teaching and assignments as the most rewarding part of the course for him. This was echoed by Loida who said that the fact she taught from the first week allowed her to get feedback and tips that she could immediately apply to her teaching in a real classroom.

So now, let’s look at some quotes from former trainees on advice they would give to someone considering a CELTA course. Facundo puts it very simply when he says “do it, go on, do it. It’s a great decision once you make it”. Orlagh is very similar saying “I would say to do it, definitely”. And Jorge sums it all up really nicely when he says “I would say, just go for it. If you think you have any sort of a chance in teaching English as a second language, I think this is the right path to do it. Get qualified. Get certified. And this certification is just amazing”.

So, there you have it. Some real feedback from real trainees. Yes, the course may be intense, challenging and time consuming, but it is one of the most rewarding ways you can spend 4 weeks and you get an invaluable qualification at the end of it. As CELTA trainers and a former CELTA trainees ourselves, we would strongly recommend talking to someone who has done the course before you sign up and then you can really find out if this is the course for you.