The length of the course is 120 contact hours (6 hours a day over 20 days for the full time

CELTA). In order to be eligible for the award of a certificate, candidates are required to:

Attend and participate in the course.

Complete 6 hours of teaching practice.

Observe 6 hours of lessons taught by experienced teachers.

Submit 4 written assignments.

Maintain and submit a portfolio of course work (i.e. lesson plans, self-evaluations, etc.).

The course covers the following syllabus:

Language Analysis and Awareness.

The Learner, the Teacher and the Learning/Teaching Context.

Planning for Effective Teaching.

Classroom Management Skills.

Teaching Procedures and Techniques.

Resources and Materials.

Professional Development.

Classroom Observation.

Teaching Practice.

Teaching Practice (TP)

An integral part of the course, TP is undertaken in small groups of 5-6 trainees with volunteer
students at two different levels (usually Elementary and Intermediate). There will normally be
from 6 15 students in a TP class. A total of 6 hours assessed teaching practice is the
requirement over the course which may be divided into a number of lessons lasting 40, 45 or 60
minutes. Feedback sessions, led by the course trainer who has been observing you, follow each
TP session and are also a key component of the course. Reflection on your teaching is part of the
learning process on the course and you will be expected to contribute to the feedback on yourself
and others.
Written assignments
These are the Focus on the learner (which encourages you to find out about your learners
backgrounds, needs and purposes in learning), the Language related task (a review of your
growing language awareness), the Language skills related task (in which you consider how you
could use an authentic text in the classroom) and the Lessons from the classroom (in which you

reflect on your strengths and weaknesses over the course). Each assignment has a word limit of
750 1,000 words and you will have 7 days in which to complete it. It is one of the
requirements for a pass grade that you pass 3 out of the 4 assignments, but you are allowed to resubmit any or all of them if you dont get it quite right first time.
Observation of experienced teachers
4 hours of this will be observation of your trainers teaching your TP students. The remaining 2
hours are made up of video observations of particular lesson types, which are timetabled into the
input sessions.
Maintaining your portfolio
Your portfolio will start as a large file/binder provided by the centre with your name on it.
Here you need to keep the lesson plan of every lesson you teach in TP together with your selfevaluation of it and the trainers written evaluation, your completed written assignments and
finally, your CELTA 5, a record-keeping booklet in which you record, amongst other things, the
times of your teaching practice and observations of experienced teachers and a summary of your
progress as discussed with your trainer in your mid-course tutorial.

A Typical Day*
To give you an idea of how you might be spending your time on the full time CELTA course,
here is an outline of a typical day at IH Bangkok:
9.00-10.30 &10.45 -12.00 Input
This is the part of the day when the trainers will be developing your knowledge and
understanding of teaching methodology and of the language itself. These sessions will take many
forms but in nearly all of them you will be expected to take a very active role, discussing
answers and solving problems with each other, reflecting together on what you have been shown
and trying things out for yourselves. Many sessions have a workshop-type framework with the
trainer acting as facilitator and resource while others consist of demonstrations of activities,
teaching techniques and lesson approaches, followed by analysis of how each can enable the
learner. One or two sessions may take the form of lectures to which you will be invited to
contribute, but these are the exception rather than the norm.

12.00 13.00 Lunch

13.00 13.45 Assisted Lesson Planning

You will divide into your teaching practice groups and the trainer who is currently observing you
will discuss with you the lesson you are next teaching or answer any last minute questions you
have. In the early stages of the course, you will be given plenty of help and advice by your
trainer but as the course progresses, the trainers will be looking to see if you plan more
independently with less and less support.

14.00-16.30 Teaching Practice (TP)

This is the most important and exciting part of the course where you can put the knowledge and
skills you are acquiring into practice, respond to feedback you have been given and learn both
from your successes and your failures. You will be given the opportunity to teach a range of
different types of lesson and at two significantly different levels, so that you have exposure to the
different types of need that learners have at different stages in their learning. If you are not
teaching yourself on a given day, you will be watching your peers teach and the trainer will often
assign you some specific observation task to do.

16.30-17.30 Feedback
Usually, your trainer will ask you to convene and share notes of what you noticed about your
own lesson and/or the lessons you have been observing. Later, the trainer will join you and lead
oral feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of yesterdays lessons, trying to draw out what
went well and why it was successful and to establish what didnt go well and how things could
have been done differently in order to be more effective, At the end of the session, if you have
been teaching, you will receive the trainers written comments on and evaluation of your lesson
and you will have the opportunity to discuss anything that is not clear.

Approx. 17.30 ? Homework

Depending on the day, you will find yourself with up to 4 hours of work to do at home. With
lessons to plan at the rate of two or three a week and four written assignments to complete over
the course, youll always have a lot to occupy your evenings!

*Please note that although the same balance of input, assisted lesson planning, TP and
feedback is observed everywhere, times vary from centre to centre due to centre working
hours and the availability of students for TP. Courses in Chiang Mai run from 11.00 am to
7.30 pm with input in the late morning and immediately after lunch, assisted lesson
planning at 3:30 pm and TP in the early evening from 5:30 7:30 pm with feedback
delayed until the following days assisted lesson planning session.