Brighton or Eastbourne? Finding your perfect CELTA course on the English south coast
Taking a TEFL course like the Cambridge CELTA is a robust way to launch or enhance your English teaching work. ELC offers two locations, Eastbourne and Brighton on…
The CELTA course is one of the world’s best known initial TEFL qualifications. It’s popular because it’s seen as something of a gold standard, designed to cover all of the elements you’re likely to require when you begin teaching English to people whose first language is not English. The CELTA courses in England tend to run most often as a 4-week intensive full-time course, or an 11 or 12-week part-time course which includes Saturdays and weekday evenings.
Because the CELTA course contains so much input, and because you’re expected to pivot very quickly to ‘apply tomorrow what you’ve learned today’, CELTA training courses are known to be very intensive, and to quote one trainer are “not for the faint-hearted!”. If you think you’ve got this, then feel free to visit our CELTA courses in England to find out more. If you want to prepare successfully for your CELTA certification course, then this is hopefully for you.
By the way, there are other teacher training courses in the UK, including the Trinity CertTESOL, which is another very well respected qualification. For today, we’ll look at the CELTA, but these pre-course tips apply to both!
Do I need to prepare before taking a CELTA course?
Yes, probably. Knowing what the CELTA course is will help you identify areas where you might need to prepare in advance. The two main areas we’re going to look at here are:
- Preparing for the course content
- Preparing yourself so you’re in a good place to succeed
(Language) teaching knowledge - the skills of the trade
Essentially the CELTA course takes you from being able to speak, read, write and understand English at a very high level, to being able to teach the language to others.
That’s quite the turnaround, especially since you might quite literally start learning on day 1 and teach your first (mini) lesson on day 2! So one of the big learning curves trainees talk about is how quickly they find themselves in front of a group of trainees
You may or may not have any previous experience of teaching others in any subject, and so it might come as a surprise when suddenly on the CELTA course you have to stand up and be the expert in front of other people! Even as a teacher of other subjects, you’re going to need to develop an appreciation of English and how it’s used, so you can teach grammar, vocabulary, phrases and idioms, and know what you’re talking about!
How to prepare: Think about when you have had to stand up in front of other people, to present, explain, train or teach, manage, lead, or otherwise ‘be on show’. Reflect on how you feel in those situations. Is there anything you’ve learned that could help you in a language classroom. Could you hone your skills at work by running a training session before you start your CELTA course? Failing that, jump online on TikTok, Instagram Reels or YouTube and watch videos of other people teaching, and start imagining what that might be like for you. Can you spot any tips and tricks and what works well?
Language proficiency and tips for improving English
Depending on when and how you learned English - many teachers of English learned English as a second language, and many native English speakers learned the language without ever being taught how the grammar works, and just use it instinctively.
And depending on when and where you went to school, and whether you learned other languages, you may or may not know all the names for the different points of speech, like verbs, adjectives, clauses and the names of tenses.
This knowledge is going to be super helpful and just having an initial familiarity with the language used when teaching English will take pressure off you if you’re not hearing it for the first time in your CELTA class.
How to prepare: Google “parts of speech” to get all sorts of explainers about things like nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and determiners. Get ahead on the reading list for the CELTA course. One book in particular is a classic for new and experienced teachers of English, and that’s Raymond Murphy’s English Grammar in Use. It’s popular because it has excellent explanations of most of the key points of grammar, and also gives you a bit of a sense of the order in which grammar is often taught.
You generally need to have a C1 level of English according to the Common European Framework of Reference. If you don’t think you have that level, or you want to brush up on your language skills, then consider an English examination course first.
Basic computer skills
The world has moved on considerably since the first version of the CELTA in 1962! These days, as a TEFL teacher, it’s a given that you’ll be working on a computer during the CELTA course.
Word processing skills are probably top of the list of requirements, so you can write up lesson plans, and some ability to manipulate images and text to create teaching materials will also come in handy.
The new kid on the block is AI, in the form of chatbots and various types of AI assistance in teaching and learning. It’s possibly hard to swallow, but we’re going to be advising strongly against deploying AI. That’s because at its heart, teaching English and CELTA course preparation is very much about tapping into your own creativity, and it’s about rediscovering language, properly learning and retaining information and skills, and developing your own resourcefulness as a teacher. Also, where you end up teaching overseas may not be a place where you can just call up ChatGPT, so better to learn to cope without.
How to prepare: Try and get access to a laptop for the CELTA course, even if your school provides you with access to computers and printers. Brush up your skills with things like desktop publishing, which could be something simple like Canva. If you feel nervous about using computers, maybe look for a computer skills course in your local area. There are often free courses available, which are funded by the government or your local council.
Lesson planning, teaching practice and observation
This is worth a mention because this is a big feature of CELTA training. You’ll learn how lesson planning works because teaching practice is a central part of the CELTA course.
You’ll spend an increasing amount of time each week teaching other people a particular part of language. To start with, you might be teaching your fellow CELTA trainees. But very quickly you’ll move on to teaching real students of English who are eager to learn and will be looking to you to help them progress!
How to prepare: Don’t worry too much about this because a lot of time is dedicated to preparing your lessons, teaching them, and then reflecting afterwards on what went well, what didn’t go so well and what you might want to do differently next time. That said, you might need to prepare psychologically for this - and we cover that below!
Personal preparation - what you bring to the party
The comment we hear most often is that the CELTA is super-intensive. According to the Qualifications and Credit Framework for England, Wales and N. Ireland, the CELTA is a Level 5 qualification, which is somewhere between A-levels (level 3) and an undergraduate degree (level 6). The fact that you are getting to that level in 4 weeks should tell you everything about its potential for feeling intensive. There are skills and attitudes that are going to help you get up to speed quickly.
Time management and organisation
As the world learns more about neurodiversity, we’re all increasingly aware that everyone’s brain is different, and we all organise ourselves in different ways, and need different conditions in which to study, learn and improve.
How to prepare: It’s a good time to reflect on what you’re going to need. Do you learn best in total silence, or do you need the hum of a busy coffee shop to concentrate? Work out what you need and where you’re going to be able to find it on the course. Above and beyond time as a group in class, you’ll need several hours each night (on the intensive CELTA course) to consolidate your knowledge and prepare lessons. So make sure you have that time and freedom from other responsibilities.
Mental well-being
The CELTA course can be challenging mentally for a number of reasons, which have caught students out in the past.
Being a beginner again: If you’re at the stage where you’ve had a sizable career already and reached a degree of seniority, the idea of being back in the classroom might come as a shock to you - you may quite simply be out of practice at learning.
Another emotion you might not be ready for is around being vulnerable - the fact that you’ll be on display, observed by your CELTA course colleagues, and you’ll be given constructive feedback based on your classroom performance. Of course it’s really helpful to experience exactly what some of your students might feel when they’re speaking up in English for the first time, but if it catches you unawares, you might feel a bit rattled.
And there’s overwhelm. You might find a bit much at times the volume of new information, the quick pivoting between learning about English language structures one day, and having to mobilise this knowledge the next; the classroom management and peer observation after a late night of preparation, and dreams about the present perfect continuous!
How to prepare: What’s great about the CELTA course is that the kinds of trainers we have at ELC Schools have been round the block, and they’ve developed an acute sense of where you’re at in your CELTA journey at any point during the course, and they’ll know how to help and support you best. There is a lot of support on this programme, and so your preparation could be as simple as making sure you’ve chosen a CELTA course provider that is professional, experienced, and which has great reviews.
Apart from that, rest up before you start. Come at it as refreshed as possible, and don’t worry about perfection: accept that you’re there to learn and improve. If you keep working hard, it’s very unlikely you’ll fail. The average pass rate tends to be between 90 and 99%.
Ready for a CELTA?
Hopefully these tips will help you feel more prepared for your CELTA course. You can be certain it’s one of the very best teacher training courses in the UK for TEFL, and the skills you learn will serve you well not only for teaching English, but for a good deal more besides.
With some careful prep you’ll hit the ground running, and your humility, enthusiasm, teamwork and a smile will carry you through to the finish.
If you’re thinking of taking a CELTA course in England but you’d like to chat to someone first, please use our contact form to get in touch.
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