Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
TEFL.net : TEFL Articles : Teacher Training : Preparing for the CELTA etc
1/4
7/7/2015
of English and seeing how much you agree with its findings.
4. Mix with foreign people
This should help you work on speaking slower and with simpler language. Ways
of finding people to speak to include conversation exchanges and volunteering to
help foreign people, e.g. as a tour guide, host family or in a local tourist
information office. If there arent any people from other countries to practice on,
time spent with a hard of hearing relative or small children might be a good
second best.
5. Get yourself interested in the language
Having a detailed knowledge of the history of English is in no way useful in the
classroom, and can in fact cause all kinds of confusion if you try to introduce
your students to it. Prompting your own interest in such things can, however,
improve your enthusiasm for your subject, which is perhaps the most important
quality for any kind of teacher. Many famous writers have written books about
the English language, but Bill Brysons Mother Tongue is almost certainly the
most entertaining. Writers from the world of linguistics who are also very
readable include David Crystal and Stephen Pinker.
6. Polish up your own English
Although factors like speaking speed and not having a good lesson plan or not
sticking it have a lot more impact on passing a TEFL certificate than your ability
not to make spelling and grammar mistakes, having a mistake pointed out by a
student is one of the most embarrassing things that can happen in class. Ways
of working on this include keeping lists of mistakes you make that a spellchecker
picks up and reading books on common mistakes. Reading a book on common
mistakes designed for non-native speakers can also help you become aware of
which mistakes to look out for when your students are speaking and writing.
Alternatively, a book written for native speakers, especially one written in a
lively style such as Troublesome Words by Bill Bryson, is more likely to focus on
the things you have problems with. Just as for your students in their grammar
studies, you are probably better off using such books in small chunks with lots of
breaks.
7. Learn the phonemic script
Like certain types of grammar, learning the secret code of the phonemic script is
something that mathematical/ analytical types get into straight away. For
others, it is reassuring to know that you are not expected to be able to write
whole sentences out in phonemics without a dictionary even at the end of the
course. Interesting ways of getting into and practicing this include learning
foreign languages with the help of a dictionary, looking up words you have never
known how to pronounce (e.g. foreign words in English), and looking at
phonetics more generally and using it to try and pronounce sounds that dont
exist in your language.
http://edition.tefl.net/articles/training-articles/preparing-for-celta/
2/4
7/7/2015
3/4
7/7/2015
inbox, paying all your bills etc before the first day of the cert. You may also
want to put some time and effort into improving your time management skills by
reading a book on it, filing things that are often difficult to find, starting a to do
list, buying a new diary etc.
14. Learn timing
Planning how long things are going to take and then checking how long they
really took is not only another good time management method that can help you
deal with the pressures of the course, but is also a useful skill to have when
writing a lesson plan and checking your progress through it in class without
having to look at your watch every ten seconds. You can practice this with
literally any daily task.
15. Relax
The thing you will have most problems finding time for during the course is
relaxation, so when you are reading up for the course do so in a reclining chair
with a freshly squeezed orange juice just before you go to the pool, so that you
start the course healthy in body and mind rather than already frazzled.
Written by Alex Case for TEFL.net
August 2008 | Filed under Teacher Training
There are links to more than 400 articles and 1000 worksheets plus 1500 blog posts by Alex
Case on TEFLtastic blog.
http://edition.tefl.net/articles/training-articles/preparing-for-celta/
4/4