Assignments
CELTA Assignments
CELTA assignments are done out of class, in addition to the lesson plans. I think that this is another way to keep trainees so busy and stressed that they do not have time to evaluate the purpose of what they are being forced to endure. In my course the trainees were given vague directions. The object seemed to be to guess what answers the tutors would accept.
This method might have worked better before the internet. When this class was designed everyone used the same books that were in the library, but with all of the information available it is easy to locate contradictory guidance. For example, some materials online tell teachers to introduce the vocabulary words at the beginning of lesson and other information says that it should be introduced in the middle of the lesson. Tutors only communicate where they expect things like this to be placed after you have turned in the assignment. In my opinion this is just a teacher preference issue, but the CELTA is designed for you to guess your way to what your tutor thinks is the correct placement.
I noticed that the trainees frequently needed a reality check because the assignments were introduced as if they were open to interpretation. My tutors even appeared to encourage individual choice. Unfortunately, the way this seemed to play out was that after having completed the assignment a trainee learned that they made the wrong choice,according to the tutor.
My analogy for tutor communication about assignments is to imagine that you have been asked to make any vegetable soup that you want. You pick a recipe and buy all of the ingredients and spend hours and hours cooking this fabulous soup.
After the head chef samples the delicacy you are told to do it again and to add more carrots and potatoes.
You: How many more carrots should I add?
Head Chef: That is for you to decide. You also left out the lentils.
You: There were no lentils in the recipe.
Head Chef: Yes, but you used the wrong recipe. You should have used this recipe.
I think the assignments are not totally without merit, but as with the rest of the CELTA course they have unnecessarily complicated learning to teach with a coursebook. I saw this as a way to create the impression that you have accomplished something extraordinary. I did not think that the estimated 100-120 hours that I spent writing these papers made me a better teacher.
I think that it would be a much more practical course if at least half of this time included the trainees tutoring three or four English students. Instead I observed that we were sitting alone at the kitchen table guessing what words and phrases hypothetical English language learners will have trouble understanding.
Resubmissions
After an assignment is completed it is reviewed by the tutor.Then they will give you written feedback and meet with you to discuss it. I observed my tutors moving the goalposts. It is important to insist that the tutors explain their comments in detail( hold them to account). Then you will be told to rewrite portions of the assignment. If the tutors are forcing someone to spend hours and hours redoing the assignment, they should have a good reason. A better reason than that that they changed the rules of the game.
There can easily be an imbalance in the amount of work each trainee needs to do to pass the assignment. I observed that some trainees were rewriting large amounts of an assignment, while others were doing next to nothing.
My best example of this is my Focus on the Learner assignment. The directions were to find spoken and written errors that were made by one of the volunteer students. This was done by evaluating a recording of an interview and one piece of their in class writing. This assignment created an unbalanced workload for some trainees. Some of us were evaluating beginning English speakers and others were evaluating more advanced students. This was equal to some people being required to take a basic math class while others are required to take calculus to achieve the same certificate. There was no justification for this,except the tutors made all of the decisions.
To complicate matters the mistakes had to fit into a few narrow categories. I located a phrase that the student had written incorrectly. The mistake was a grammatical error, but I took the position (in an open assignment) that this upper-level student wanted to use common phrases. I supported this position with the appropriate information. The tutor took the stance that it was a grammatical error. However, if I had labelled it as a grammatical error the tutor could have informed me that it was a phrase that was written incorrectly.
Furthermore, the directions changed for my resubmission. My tutor told me to go back and only find errors made due to his native language.This direction was difficult to follow because he had not been in a country where they spoke French for about twenty years.I was the only student in the class that was directed to use the audio for the resubmission.
When neither of us could find an error that qualified, I was told to research a specific common error that was made by French speakers that were learning English. I was also assigned specific books to use this time around. I strongly felt that this was a misuse of power by the tutor. I am sure some would like to defend this as just part of the course, but when the directions are only changed for one trainee it is not an ethical practice. No course should exist where this practice is even possible.
These are the books that I found the most useful for the assignments.
The Practice of English Language Teaching
Book by Jeremy Harmer
How to Teach English
Book by Jeremy Harmer
Learning Teaching: The Essential Guide to English Language Teaching
Book by Jim Scrivener
Teaching English Grammar: What to Teach and how to Teach it
Book by Jim Scrivener
Teaching Grammar
Book by Jim Scrivener
Practical English Usage
Book by Michael Swan
Concept Questions and Time Lines
Book by Graham Workman
