Anyone who’s followed my blog for a while knows I’m a fan of podcasts. I’ve occasionally written about ELT podcasts before, and have been meaning to collect together a list of them in one place for a while. The wait is finally over 🙂
To minimise the amount of editing I may need to do with this list in the future (I hope!) I’ve only linked to the website for each podcast, and from there you can find all of the links to follow it on podcast streaming services. I’ve included a brief summary of the type of content and typical episode lengths.
Please add a comment if you have any other English Language Teaching podcasts to add to the list, or if any of the links are broken.
*Disclaimer: I’m a co-presenter of one of these, and have popped up on various of them. No favouritism is intended!
The podcast of the IATEFL TDSIG (International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language Teacher Development Special Interest Group). A mix of interviews and discussions.
Produced until 2014, but content is still relevant. Conversations following on from #ELTchat Twitter chats. The website lists the content, but you’ll need to Google for links to the episodes as the JavaScript no longer works. For example, on Apple.
Here’s one that feels quite different. Ola talks about being a freelance teacher (ELTpreneur / teacherpreneur), discussing challenges, and providing lots of tips to make your teaching business as successful as it can be
‘A podcast for language teachers that isn’t about language teaching’
The team (including me) chat around various subjects, which may be more or less directly related to the classroom. There’s always an activity for your classroom at the end of the podcast, and sometimes others during the episode, depending on the topic.
20-60 minutes
Who’s Zooming Who? mini series, covering ideas for teaching online = 10-15 minutes
A range of different episode types. The numbered episodes include TEFL news, TEFL history (focussing on historical figures) and TEFL cultures (focussing on a key concept). There are also in-depth interviews, excerpts from John Fanselow’s Small Changes, Big Results book, and other ideas too.
40-60 minutes
Bonus extra: The TEFLology creators have published a book called Podcasting and Professional Development: A Guide for English Language Teachers [Amazon affiliate link] with the-round, which gives a useful introduction to creating your own podcasts.
‘The bite-sized TEFL podcast’, featuring a wide range of guests. Interviews and discussions, with full transcripts available on the site. I reviewed the podcast in 2017.
On the CELTA course I tutored on back in August 2021, I ran a session on teaching under 16s. As part of it, I asked the trainees to create a list of questions they wanted the answers to. I promised them a blogpost with answers, but it’s taken this long to get round to it!
It’s actually ended up as three blogposts, divided into:
The age brackets may seem a little arbitrary – I selected them as they reflected to some extent the age ranges at schools I’ve previously worked for. The posts themselves are mostly a selection of links to answer the questions, rather than my own answers. Please feel free to add extra links in the comments, and let me know if any of the links are broken.
Classroom for young learners – photo by Roseli Serra from ELTpics, shared under a Creative Commons 2.0 licence
Are the techniques that we discussed in the CELTA course suitable for young learners?
CELTA is primarily designed for teachers working with adults, but many of the techniques and activities covered on the course are applicable to teaching young learners too. For example, you still need to make sure that your activity set-up is clear and concise, that it’s supported with demonstrations, and that you check students have understood your instructions. I think the two main differences to be aware of are the developmental stage of young learners (they may not be able to do certain things which adults can do easily) and their concentration span. You will probably need to move onto new activities more quickly with young learners, though they can still get very engaged in some activities and do them for far longer than you might expect. As a general rule though, I plan to change activities every 5 minutes or so in the YL classroom, and I aim to include a mix of stirrers and settlers (ideas from British Council and Cambridge).
What coursebooks are good for this age range?
I’d rather not recommend specific coursebooks, not least because they change so frequently, and there are so many on the market I can’t possibly know the best ones 😉 Instead, think of criteria that you believe are important for your learners. For example, you might want a book that includes some or all of the following:
Manageable amounts of vocabulary (probably 6-10 new items per lesson – the younger they are, the fewer they can probably retain from one lesson to the next)
Grammatical structures presented in sentences / as functional language to learn implicitly – the older they are, the more that young learners might be able to cope with explicit grammar study, and perhaps also metalanguage (for example tense names) (see Carol Read on Grammar)
Lots of recycling of vocabulary and structures
A set of characters who are consistent through the book
A story that is told throughout the book
Songs/chants
Project ideas
Extra reading
A teacher’s book in your L1/English
A workbook with extra practice activities
Extra online activities / an accompanying website
Ask publishers if you can speak to teachers (or even students!) who’ve used their books – that might help you to decide.
What kind of tasks work with this age group?
If you don’t have much time to plan a first lesson with children in their first or second year of English, Anka Zapart has a survival kit.
This series of articles from OneStopEnglish shows how to use video, dramatic play, music and movement, and stories in the classroom – it requires you to login – you can read one free article per month.
Alex Case suggests ways of using the topics of animals and toys to present a wide range of different language.
Should I use games?
And the supplementary questions: How much fun is too much fun during the lesson? How do I incorporate entertainment into my lesson and still keep it productive? Where is the balance between a game and a serious task completion?
The only extra thing I would add about young learners is that it’s worth planning in 5-minute chunks, aiming to shift the focus/activity every 5 minutes or so. If it’s a particularly engaging task, like a project, it might go for longer, but even then you may need to check in with them every few minutes to make sure they’re still on task.
How do I work on group dynamics?
I couldn’t find any specific links connected to building group dynamics with young learners (please add any suggestions in the comments if you know of some). The closest thing I could find is Why putting children together in groups doesn’t always work.
This is my post about group dynamics with all groups, though mostly focussing on adults.
Shall I adapt the book materials, creating my own worksheets for each lesson?
This question comes with more context: “All the tasks in the coursebook for YL (the first year of learning English) I use in a state school are written in Russian. I wish I could choose a book, but I can’t. I guess it’s not beneficial for a communicative approach.”
Without seeing the book myself and not knowing the context first-hand, it’s difficult for me to answer this question specifically. However, I would say that creating your own worksheets for each lesson is very time-consuming, creates a lot of work for you, and could lead to burnout. Instead, think about how you can exploit the materials you have in a range of different ways, and how you can incorporate opportunities to use English throughout the lesson.
How do I stop them from using L1 in class? How do I encourage them to speak English?
Alex Case talks about possible problems with the running around game ‘stations’ and suggests a wide range of ways to adapt it. These could help you in thinking about ways to adapt other games/activities too.
Teaching young children one-to-one from One Stop English: it requires you to login – you can read one free article per month, so choose carefully or subscribe!
What blogs can I read?
I added this question 🙂 Please let me know about others!
The age brackets may seem a little arbitrary – I selected them as they reflected to some extent the age ranges at schools I’ve previously worked for. The posts themselves are mostly a selection of links to answer the questions, rather than my own answers. Please feel free to add extra links in the comments, and let me know if any of the links are broken.
A row of shoes – photo by Vicky Loras from ELTpics, shared under a Creative Commons 2.0 licence
Do you think it is a good idea to start learning English at a very young age (e.g. 2)?
This is an area which has generated quite a lot of research over the years, and as with anything so context-based, the answer seems to be ‘it depends’. Here are some answers to the question that have been shared in the media:
It’s also important to be aware of what such young children are likely to be able to do in their own language at this age. Here’s an example for English-speaking children from an Australian website, but it’s worth looking up for the first language of the children you’re teaching too.
My thoughts are that it depends on what you’re aiming to achieve by sending your child to English classes so young, or by exposing them to the language in other ways such as through English-language TV. If it’s efficiency, then starting to learn when they’re a little older can get them where you want them to be in less time as they can be analytical about the process, and pay attention to rules as well as what they learn from exposure. But starting to learn when they’re younger, enjoying the process and building up a love for the language can increase their motivation and make them want to continue learning.
Are there any specific techniques for teaching very young learners?
Teaching VYLs in a digital classroom by Justyna Mikulak:
How do I make lessons more interactive? How do I keep them busy and interested for more time?
Hand over to the children as much as you can, once you’ve clearly demonstrated an activity. Children learn the word ‘teacher’ very quickly, so you can say ‘Maria, you’re the teacher’ They might not understand at first, but very soon they can take control and be in charge of activities. Here’s one example.
I’m going to interpret this question as ‘What can I use other than a coursebook/worksheet to teach VYLs?’ There are lots of ideas in the techniques above, but here are a few more.
Not much! Typical VYL coursebooks introduce 3-4 new items of lexis, or one structure, in a single 45-minute lesson. They also include lots of recycling as children of this age forget quickly.
How do I control discipline? What do I do if they don’t pay attention?
Most of the teaching you do in the VYL classroom will be based on vocabulary and building chunks of language. Grammar is learnt intrinsically, rather than studied as a separate thing. Here’s some information from Carol Read about how young children learn grammar, and from Michelle Worgan about teaching chunks of language to VYLs.
Phonology is learnt through imitation. The use of songs and jazz chants (see the first question above) can be useful for creating the motivation to imitate the teacher/the materials you use. These are probably the best way to drill new sounds, though you can also play around with the differences between sounds the children are producing and the target sounds. For example, use contrastive drills where you move from one sound to the other and back again, and really emphasise the mouth shape in each position.
What do I do if young learners protest against using English?
(in case they already speak and at some point want to use only L1)
To some extent this is answered in the previous question, but I think it’s also worth considering why they are protesting against using English, and whether it’s a one-off or something more regular. Are they bored? Are they uncomfortable in the lesson/group? Are they looking for attention? The answer to this question will help you decide what to do.
If they’re bored, you need to find ways to change your activities, for example by getting them moving around for a few minutes rather than sitting down.
If they’re uncomfortable in the lesson, what can you do to help them relax? Sometimes a time-out, or a chance to sit apart from the group can be useful to allow children time to de-stress. At other times, moving onto a new activity could help.
If they’re uncomfortable in the group, building in activities to help them share with other members of the group and learn a little about their classmates can help, for example, bringing their favourite toy to class.
If they’re looking for attention, follow Anka’s advice.
I added this question 🙂 You’ll notice that a lot of the links come from a limited range of sources, because they’re the blogs I follow which deal with this age group. Please let me know about others!
Funky Socks and Dragons – Anka Zapart – very active as I write this (and most of the links here come from Anka’s amazing blog!)
Klokanomil – Kylie Malinowska – not currently active, but a great archive
I use Feedly as a blog reader to collate posts from the blogs I follow. I love the simplicity of the format, and being able to see at a glance what is waiting for me to read. I generally look at it for a few minutes each day, sharing posts that I think would be useful for others on social media and bookmarking them for future reference using Diigo.
Since I started reading posts on my phone this workflow has become a little more convoluted, and I often end up emailing myself things to bookmark for later as it’s not as convenient to bookmark from my phone. This post is a collection of many of those posts as I clear out my email folder, and could serve as a good starting point if you’re looking for blogs to follow. They show a cross-section of what I read, and demonstrate just how varied the ELT blogosphere is.
On a side note, if you’ve considering starting a blog but think ‘Nobody will care what I write’, remember that there’s room for all kinds of teachers and writers, and your voice is interesting too. You never know what will click for somebody else when they read what you write. The blog is also there as notes for yourself later – I’m often surprised when I come across posts from my archive!
Happy reading!
Health and wellbeing
Lizzie Pinard summarised an IATEFL webinar on Mental health, resilience and COVID-19, adding her own experiences too. Lizzie also recommends Rachael Robert’s webinar on avoiding burnout for ELT professionals, and shares how she has been managing her workspace and mindset while working from home. I’ve been doing inbox zero for about two months now, as recommended by Rachael in a talk I went to in January, and it’s made me feel so much better!
Activities for very young learners and young learners
Chris Roland’s ETprofessional article on Managing online fun is full of activities and classroom management tips for working with young learners online.
Anka Zapart talks about the benefits of online classes with very young learners, many of which are applicable to young learners too. She shares a useful site with online games with VYLs and YLs, and introduced me to colourful semantics as way of extending language production for children. She also has a very clear framework for choosing craft activities which would and wouldn’t work for a VYL/YL classroom, and this example of a very reusable caterpillar craft.
Pete Clements has a lesson plan for young learners (and older ones too!) which combines all kinds of different areas: environmental awareness, drawing, used to, modals of advice…all based on a single student-generated set of materials.
Activities for teens and adults
Making excuses is a game to practice making requests and making excuses, including both online and offline variations, from Mike Astbury’s incredibly practical blog.
Jade Blue talks about the benefits of drawing to learn language, including a range of simple activities that should help students to remember vocabulary and grammar structures, and process texts they read and listen to. She also shares ideas for exploiting authentic materials, both for intensive and extensive use.
Ken Wilson has started to post English language teaching songs he and colleagues wrote and recorded in the 70s and 80s. They still seem very relevant now and could still promote a lot of discussion. The first three are What would you do? (second conditional), It makes me mad (environmental problems) and Looking forward to the day (phrasal verbs / the environment).
Leo Selivan has a lesson plan based on the Coldplay and Chainsmokers song Something just like this. David Petrie using sound effects as the basis for a review of narrative tenses.
Julie Moore has written ten posts with vocabulary activities based around coronavocab. The last one has examples of phrases which learners might need to describe how coronavirus has changed their lives.
Marc Jones suggests ideas for and asks for help with speaking assessments online when your students just won’t speak.
Matthew Noble is writing a teaching diary of his fully online blended Moodle/Zoom courses, with lots of interesting insights and learning shared. Here’s the post from week two (on building group dynamics) and week five (on making sure your computer will work properly and encouraging students to have good online etiquette).
Rachel Tsateri shows how to exploit Google Jamboard as an online whiteboard, including vocabulary revision, brainstorming, and sentence structure activities.
Naomi Epstein describes the journey she went on when trying to add glossaries to reading texts for her students, and the problems she encountered when she was on a computer but they were on a phone.
In my trainings I like to use the example of the students taking a class on how to fold a parachute that will be used the next day to jump out of an airplane. The students tell me “It was a wonderful class—the teacher explained and showed how to fold the chute step by step. Then the camera moves to the students and they are taking notes—very engaged in the lecture. They all pass the written test. The question is, will they now be able to successfully fold their parachutes in a way that they will have a successful jump? What would you suggest that the teacher did differently? I have always loved Michael Jerald’s (my SIT TESOL Cert trainer) question(s), “What did they learn and how do you know they learned it?” Now we are talking about skills, not knowledge—and effective communication is a skill. The parachute teacher had no way of knowing that they would be successful, even though they had aced the written test. So, whether or not face-to-face or by way of video, the nature of student engagement is the most important issue. It needs to be observed!
Zhenya also wrote about a reflective activity called Four suitcases, which could be particularly useful for anyone feeling down about the current state of the world and their place in it.
Distractions can make the writing process much longer than it needs to be. Rachael Roberts offers tips on how to deal with them on the IATEFL Materials Writing Special Interest Group (MAWSIG) blog.
In a guest post on the same blog, Kip Webster talks about the importance of explicitly teaching directness and indirectness, particularly for maintaining group dynamics, and taking advantage of ‘teachable moments’ during lessons. In another guest post, Miranda Crowhurst shares an excellent range of tips for using social media to advance your teaching career. (As you can see, it’s a blog well worth following!)
If you’re thinking about alternative approaches to lesson planning post-CELTA, Pete Clements talks about the steps he went through when moving towards materials-light teaching. This reflects my experience too.
Pete Clements reflects on the differences between an MA, PGCEi or DipTESOL, all of which he’s done. He also hosted a guest post from Michael Walker on the benefits of student and teacher reflection journals, particularly how it worked as an avenue for him to get regular feedback from his students which influenced future lessons.
Philip Kerr’s posts are always thought-provoking. Mindfulness for beginners questions the strength of research behind the attention mindfulness is now receiving in education.
Russ Mayne asks should we use translation software, especially questioning its role in EAP contexts, and how we might need to update our teaching and assessment criteria to assess the inevitable student use of this ever-improving tool. He also writes about retraction in ELT and shares examples of research which has been retracted. (This BBC Inside Science episode has an interview with Stuart Ritchie which I would also recommend.)
Classrooms and coronavirus
David Petrie talks about how he helped his exam students prepare for doing speaking exams in masks.
Alex Case shares ideas for coronavirus changes for EFL classes. While this might be tongue-in-cheek, I’m sure some of them aren’t that far from things we might be seeing in our classrooms/schools over the next couple of years!
Since the murder of George Floyd, discussion about racism and how to address it has been brought much more to the attention of many white people and the media. Hopefully this time it will be the #metoo moment that makes the difference, and we won’t still be having these same discussions in fifty years with no change in sight.
Here is a collection of resources which I will add to to help us all learn more about racism in ELT and what we can do about it. Please comment if you know of other resources I’ve missed.
General resources
The TEFLology podcast has a list of resources on racism in ELT, including research and journal articles.
IATEFL has an Inclusive Practices and Special Educational Needs Special Interest Group (IP&SEN SIG). They have a website, facebook page, and Twitter account. One section of their site is dedicated to racial inclusion including a huge range of other links not shared on my list here.
IATEFL’s Global Issues SIG (GISIG) also have resources on a wide range of subjects, including discrimination.
In June 2020, English UK announced that it will create an action group to “focus on how values of anti-racism, diversity and inclusion are embedded in the sector.”
The field of English language teaching (ELT) has long centred whiteness without acknowledging as much. Practitioners accept the field’s racial disparities under the guise of the search for profit, yet hegemonic whiteness controls our institutions, our curricula, and our pedagogy unless we, as members of this field, consciously seek to counteract its influence. White ELT professionals are incentivized to maintain the racial status quo and many exhibit fierce resistance when efforts are made to discuss white supremacy in English teaching. In this article, I demonstrate how ELT frames whiteness as both a prize and a goal, explain the deleterious impact whiteness has on racialized students and teachers, argue for the necessity of decentring whiteness, and provide suggestions for ways we can push our field towards a future where whiteness no longer reigns supreme.These are my bookmarks connected to racism.
Jasmine Cochran, a black American woman teaching English language and literature in China told the BBC about how George Floyd’s death changed her Chinese students. She also described her wider experience of being a black teacher in China and shares examples of activities she has done to help her students broaden their world view.
Noreen Caplen-Spence tells her story in an interview with the ELGazette called Black teachers matter.
A hundred thirty years after the abolition of slavery and post-slave trade in Brazil, Black people remain the minority amongst teachers in English courses of private and public schools. This situation is tagged in their professional situation insofar as an aftermath of racism and coloniality are concerned, as I shall argue here. In this study, I seek to examine the ways race can be negatively or positively expanded in the performance of the identities of Black English language teachers, framing themselves as either resistant identities in/through language (using the language as a strategy to resist) or resistant identities to language (negating themselves as capable speakers or teachers).
Ahmar Mahboob wrote a chapter called Racism in the ELT industry in A. Mahboob & C. Lipovsky (eds.) Studies in Applied Linguistics and Language Learning (2009) for Cambridge Scholars Press. The link takes you to a pdf version of the chapter on Academic.edu.
In the classroom
Film English has a B1/B2 lesson plan based on a video called Racism is Real.
Hana Ticha shares a lesson plan for helping students to realise what it feels like to be discriminated against.
The Lexical Lab blog has a post about handling conflict in the classroom, including how to respond when students express racism, homophobia or other opinions which can be difficult to know how to respond to.
One of the best TED talks I’ve ever seen (I don’t have a lesson plan for it, but maybe you do?) is The danger of a single story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:
Nappy is an image bank of black and brown people available for free under a Creative Commons license. This image by Catina K Taylor was taken from the collection:
For a lot of teachers, it can be hard to find the time or the opportunity to observe and learn from other teachers’ lessons. If that’s you, hopefully you’ll find these videos useful.
I’ve divided them into loose categories, with a sentence or two to help you decide which are the most relevant to you. Within the categories, they’re just in the order I found them! I’d like to thank the many people who’ve sent me links to these videos over the years (though unfortunately I can’t remember exactly who sent me what!)
Please feel free to tell me about other videos I may have missed in the comments, as well as any broken links. I’d particularly appreciate any VYL, YL or teen videos that may be out there, though I know they may be hard to find.
P.S. I’ll admit that I haven’t watched all of these from start to finish, just bits and pieces, so please proceed with caution…
Very young learners
Anka Zapart has a list of VYL lesson clips on her blog, some of which overlap with the ones I have below.
Hubert Puchta introducing vocabulary and using Total Physical Response (TPR) and telling an action story (7 minutes)
An American kindergarten teacher working in a French-language immersion school (27 minutes) (via David Deubelbeiss)
Teacher Allen singing a song and teaching a demo lesson with Chinese kindergarteners (10 minutes)
Another kindergarten lesson in China, this time with 33 children (30 minutes)
Michael Roxas working on adjectives, using TPR and introducing clothes with a kindergarten group, working with a Chinese teacher (27 minutes) Michael has other videos of him teaching kindergarten on his YouTube channel.
This one shows Mark working with puppets (3 minutes)
Paul Pemberton teaching kindergarteners in China (30 minutes), including a really nice routine for getting kids to put their hands up
Shaun teaching 3 year olds in China for a parents’ open day (15 minutes)
Hannah Sophia Elliot teaching kindergarten in China (41 minutes)
Ann teaching children using a story bag (9 minutes)
Watts English have a series of videos showing children in Prague kindergarten. Here’s the first (20 minutes) Look at the Czech playlist for more, as well as the games bank.
Here’s an example of a teacher using a puppet as part of their WOW! method (5 minutes)
Savannah building rapport with a brand new group of students (4 minutes)
Tony using role plays as part of a demo lesson (23 minutes)
Najmul Hasan (a.k.a. Peter) also has a range of videos of him teaching kindergarten. Here’s one (25 minutes)
Rebecca Eddy teaching shapes to a kindergarten class in China (13 minutes)
This video is designed to show teachers how to run a demo lesson, but there are also lots of useful tips in there and examples of how to set up activities (9 minutes)
Tanner Applegate teaching 3 year olds in China (6 minutes)
Marco Brazil teaching colours to very young learners (4 minutes)
Teaching weather to kindergarten children, with a Chinese teacher also in the room (15 minutes)
Introducing body parts (4 minutes)
Thanks very much to Lucy, who suggested in the comments that I look up kindergarten ESL teacher on YouTube, which led to most of the above videos!
Young learners
Adi Rajan suggested the Teacher Development films available on the British Council website, accompanied by workbooks. Here’s one example (52 minutes):
Marisa Constantinides playing the ‘please’ game, and thereby demonstrating total physical response (TPR) (8 minutes) She wrote about this activity, plus two more with accompanying videos (Thanks for letting me know, Marisa!)
Ashley Haseley teaching sensory reactions in China (12 minutes)
Kaila Smith talking about teaching children in China, with lots of clips from her classes (4 minutes)
Pass the bag, a video of a game shared by Ian Leahy (90 seconds)
Sam playing a days of the week game with Thai children (2 minutes)
This video shows you how to do guided reading with elementary learners – it’s mostly describing the technique, but there are various clips of the teacher at work (11 minutes)
A counting game for kids (2 minutes)
This is a video describing various classroom management techniques shared by Ian Leahy. Although there is a voiceover throughout the entire video, there are lots of clips of exactly what’s happening. (16 minutes)
Gunter Gerngross demonstrating TPR with young learners (3 minutes)
Karlee Demierre using a body parts song (3 minutes)
Introducing animal vocabulary in a demo lesson, with lots of flashcard games (32 minutes)
Teens
A shopping lesson with pre-intermediate students using Solutions Pre-Intermediate (17 minutes)
Ross Thorburn introducing the rooms in a school (6 minutes)…
…and showing how unmonitored group work ran (35 seconds)
Ross Thorburn using flashcards with beginner young learners (1:10)…
…and with elementary young learners (1:30)
Ross also has tips for behaviour management, including live examples from class (5 minutes)…
…and demonstrating routines (7 minutes)
In this video, Ross introduces vocabulary, then takes his class into a shopping mall (8 minutes)
Adults (coursebook-based)
Sarah Troughear teaching a group using Life Pre-Intermediate, based on the topic of transport (60-minutes, including post-lesson analysis)
Clive Brown teaching a group using Life Upper Intermediate, based on the topic of documentary film-makers (37 minutes, including post-lesson analysis)
Andrew Walkley using an image to get students interested in a coursebook topic and lead in to a discussion (6 minutes)
Hugh Dellar teaching listening lexically – part 1 (13 minutes)
and part 2…
Stacey Hughes teaching using an e-book – find out more (10 minutes)
Me 🙂 teaching upper intermediate students – working with gerunds and infinitives (8 minutes) – find out more
Me clarifying the difference between ‘borrow’ and ‘lend’ with upper intermediate (9 minutes)
Me teaching money vocab to intermediate students (15 minutes)
Adults (non-coursebook-based)
Billy Hasirci teaching a demo lesson for a CELTA course (he’s the tutor!) He’s working with intermediate students, listening to a song (41 minutes)
Lindsay Warwick teaching second conditional (1 hour)
Hugh Dellar demonstrating the lexical approach, including lots of whiteboard work (18 minutes)
Elizabeth Kuizenga Romijn teaching high-level beginners (I would say elementary) cooking vocabulary using realia (38 minutes)
John Bartik teaching beginners the phrase ‘I like ______’ (13 minutes)
Chris Westergaard teaching animal vocabulary to a group of intermediate students (14 minutes)…
…and movie vocabulary to another intermediate group (10 minutes)
Functional language to help students debate, I’d guess at intermediate or upper intermediate level. I don’t know the teacher’s name, but it was shared on the ELT Experiences blog (17 minutes)
You can watch Luke Meddings teaching a dogme [What is dogme?] lesson by going to the British Council website. (40 minutes) There is a video of him using dogme with another group (26 minutes) and reflecting on it (24 minutes) available on the English Agenda website.
Martin Sketchley experimenting with dogme (9 minutes)…
…and doing a dictogloss (14 minutes)
Dr. Frances A. Boyd demonstrating lots of error correction techniques (14 minutes) (via Matt Noble)
Laura Patsko demonstrating how to do a pronunciation needs analysis with a multilingual class – find out more (16 minutes)
You can watch a process writing lesson by going to the British Council website. (37 minutes)
Fergus Fadden working on reading with an elementary group as a demo lesson (23 minutes) (Thanks Lucy)
Ross Thorburn teaching an IELTS speaking class, working on describing a city you’ve visited (15 minutes)…
…and teaching an intermediate class to give advice (20 minutes)
Andrew Drummond demonstrating a present-practice-produce (PPP) lesson structure using jobs (a demo lesson for trainees)… (21 minutes)
…and using PPP to teach the functional language of interrupting, followed by an analysis of the lesson stages (28 minutes)
Paullo Abreu (?) teaching second conditional (1 hour)
Olha Madylus teaching vocabulary and grammar to elementary students as a demo on a CELTA course (15 minutes)
Very small groups
Lavender teaching vocabulary (5 minutes)
Short clips
4 clips of Hugh Dellar (I think with upper intermediate students)
Monitoring a discussion
2. Upgrading and clarifying language (3:30)
3. Setting up a speaking activity (1:20)
4. Clarifying language (3:30)
Martin Sketchley doing an activity with Arabic students to help them with spelling (6 minutes)
Katy Simpson-Davies using jazz chants (3:30)
Ian Leahy demonstrating 3 games, 1 each with adults, young learners and teens (3 minutes)
Ross Thorburn teaching adults to accept and reject invitations (3 minutes)
Conveying grammatical meaning, focussing on ‘used to’ and ‘would’ on Ross Thorburn’s channel (3 minutes)
Ross Thorburn giving instructions (3 minutes)
Olya Sergeeva demonstrating how to teach decoding skills to help students understand connected speech (5 minutes 30 seconds). This blog post explaining a little more accompanies the video.
Online teaching
Fergus Fadden teaching a lesson on Google + (13 minutes)
Hugh Dellar teaching a one-hour Skype lesson based on Outcomes Advanced with three students from Krasnodar, Russia. It includes examples of Hugh works with lexis, as an advocate of the lexical approach.
Angelos Bollas teaching a CELTA demo grammar lesson to upper intermediate students on Zoom, showing you what it’s like from the teacher’s perspective:
Angelos again, teaching another CELTA demo lesson, this time using task-based materials using the Fluency First blog:
Trainee teachers
CELTA TP7, as uploaded by English with Stephanie, intermediate students, restaurants (45 minutes)
And TP8, focussing on functional language, again with intermediate students (35 minutes)
David teaching during CELTA uploaded by Insearch LearningCentre (60 minutes) – I’m guessing it’s elementary or pre-intermediate students, talking about a trip to Japan
Anastasia, a Russian trainee who did her CELTA in 2012 (47 minutes)
Please feel free to suggest any extra videos or to tell me if there are any broken links.
Panic attacks can affect anyone. After my interview for the CELTA course which I was trained on, probably the easiest interview of my life, I was walking to my friend’s house thinking it over. As I walked I started to hyperventilate, and I thought I might be having an asthma attack. I couldn’t understand what was happening because although I have asthma, it causes coughing fits, not ‘normal’ asthma attacks. When I got to her house, I couldn’t really talk, and I couldn’t calm down. I started to get pins and needles in my fingers and toes, gradually moving up my limbs. She phoned 999 because neither of us knew what was going on. When the paramedic came, he gave me oxygen and explained what was happening. It took at least 15 minutes for me to start breathing normally again and for the pins and needles to go away. I suspect the thought that triggered the attack was probably me worrying that they wouldn’t accept me onto the course, though I already knew they had: it was my final year of university and my entire plan after my degree was based around getting a CELTA and becoming an ELT teacher. It has only happened to me once so far. I had the first steps towards another one when I was ill at New Year a few weeks ago, but thankfully my amazing best friend was looking after me, and falling sleep due to exhaustion meant I didn’t go all the way into the pit this time.
Time to talk
Apparently, 2nd February is Time to Talk Day 2017, a UK event “to get the nation talking about mental health and keep the conversation going round the clock”. For a combination of reasons, mental health is an area I have become more and more aware of over the past couple of years, and I’ve been thinking of putting together a list of connected resources for a while. This seems like the perfect opportunity.
My panic attacks they come from the tiniest smallest thoughts—and if you don’t know anything about panic attacks you tend to think that panic attacks are something huge—that they are huge, really life-threatening situations but for me they can be the smallest things. It starts from a tiny thought—and that thought can be a trigger which sets you off. Then you’re into a cycle. A panic cycle, they call it.
Longwell, Phil
In May 2020, Phil recorded an interview for the TDSIG Developod podcast talking about mental health in general and within ELT.
The UK’s NHS website has a page explaining the symptoms of a panic attack, with a video showing how to tackle the vicious circle that starts it, and a link to tips for coping with a panic attack if you’re having one now.
Rebecca Cope has also had problems at work caused by anxiety attacks, and has written about them very movingly. If this happens to you (and I sincerely hope it doesn’t), you are not alone. Please please please do not be afraid to talk about it. There is nothing wrong with you. If you talk about it, then we can all help the stigma to go away and we can all try to move towards supporting each other and being there when things happen. By the way, as well as being a great writer, Rebecca is a talented artist, as can be seen here:
Teresa Bestwick describes how even as a successful and long-standing conference presenter, she still feels the effects of the imposter phenomenon before she presents.
Not specifically ELT, but the ‘Behave‘ episode of the language podcast The Allusionist is about how to defuse the power of words going round in your head.
Accepting that thinking (and overthinking!) is what the mind does, and not getting frustrated about it, is key. Instead, it’s a case of gently and repeatedly bringing the mind back to the present moment. And from there, you can identify which of the thoughts, if any, are useful to listen to and pursue, rather than just being stuck amidst a load of endless mind babble.
She has also summarised a webinar by Emma Reynolds called ‘Mind full or Mindful?’ which was part of the 2019 Macmillan World Teachers Day Conference.
If you want to explore a metaphor which could help, try four suitcases on Zhenya Polosatova’s blog. Another metaphor that I think is useful is that of the stress bucket – thanks to Lizzie Pinard for introducing it to me in this post on learning about mental health first aid.
Supporting others
Here’s a post from WeAreTeachers asking the question Should teachers take mental health days? including advice on what to do with one of those days when you decide that they are necessary for you.
Surviving as a teacher – living/working abroad, difficult colleagues, teaching long hours
One of the things Phil mentioned in his post was the extra pressure that those of us living and working abroad add to our lives by choosing to move away from home, often into places where we don’t speak the language or understand the culture. Here’s an 8-minute talk on helping teachers settle in, which I did at the IH DoS conference a couple of years ago based on my own experiences of arriving in many a new place. It was designed for managers/employers and not directly related to mental health, but it might give you ideas of what to ask for/about on arrival, especially if anxiety is a problem for you.
Another area that can cause a lot of problems is work-life balance, which I have a lot of bookmarks related to. They include tips for getting a better balance yourself, information about the importance of planning breaks into your day and examples of what other people have done. This is one of my favourite reminders of what you can do to help yourself take a break:
Sarah Mercer did an excellent plenary talk at IATEFL 2017 about psychologically wise teachers. The third section includes tips on how to look after yourself.
Burnout is also an issue which can affect people in many professions, particularly the so-called ‘caring professions’. Clare Maas has quotes from various teachers on avoiding burnout, and a list of tips and suggestions, of which I think the final paragraph is particularly useful.
Roseli Serra describes her experience and those of teachers she has interviewed, then offers advice on how to reduce the likelihood of burnout happening to you.
Lizzie Pinard responds to a webinar by Rachael on avoiding burnout for ELT professionals and talks about her own coping mechanisms for working from home.
Marc Jones is blogging about his ADHD and how it affects his life and his job as an English teacher.
Other people who have talked about their experiences of mental health issues as English language teachers include Lizzie Pinard, and the podcasters at TEFLology. Lizzie has also summarised a workshop she attended on promoting positive mental health, particularly for LGBT+ people, but with tips that everyone should find useful.
Phil Longwell used his IATEFL 2018 talk to describe the findings of research he has done over the past year about the mental health of English language teachers. You can read about his findings here, whilst the recording is here:
He also did a 10-minute interview for the IATEFL YouTube channel:
Other
The 8th March 2018 Twitter #ELTchat was about Teachers’ well-being and mental health, including stories, possible causes for poor mental health, and how things are slowly starting to change.
Phil Longwell summarised a one-day conference he went to in 2022 about the benefits of nature and its effect on mental health.
Although epilepsy doesn’t quite fall into the same category as the other mental health issues discussed above, I feel it’s also important to share Kate Cory-Wright’s story of Coping with Epilepsy in the World of Education, and this post seems like the best place to do it.
Update: March 2020 – COVID pandemic
Phil Longwell compiled a list of links to help you with mental health and wellbeing during the COVID-19 outbreak. He has also conducted informal research into the impact of the pandemic on teachers, the summary of which includes quotes from teachers all over the world. Meanwhile, Lizzie Pinard summarised an IATEFL webinar about Mental health, resilience and COVID-19.
And…?
If you know of any other useful links or if any of these don’t work for you, please let me know so that I can update the post. Together we are all stronger.
There are a lot of wonderful blogs out there, but sometimes it can be a bit hard to find what you’re looking for when you need it.
I found this when I started teaching a student who was almost completely blind, which is why I wrote my Rethinking the Visual posts. I also came across English With Kirsty, and was happy to get help from her with my classes. She later wrote a post called The Inclusive Classroom with tips on working with blind and partially sighted students. In the first part of the 22nd July 2015 episode of the Teflology podcast one of the podcasters talks about how he integrated a blind student into his classroom.
Naomi Epstein writes one of my favourite blogs. She teaches deaf and hard-of-hearing students, and shares lesson plans and reflections on her teaching, among many other things. Some of the categories which you might find useful are:
Joanna Malefaki has written about how colour blindness affects her life and her teaching, from which you can gather suggestions about what (not) to do to help colour-blind students in your classes. She also pointed me in the direction of the Colour Blind Awareness YouTube channel, particularly the Rainbow Song, which is the first time I’ve really understood how different the world looks to someone who’s colour blind.
Image taken from ELTpics by @yearinthelifeof under a Creative Commons 3.0 licence
I know there must be many other posts out there to help you integrate more students into your classes, so what have I missed?
I’d particularly like to know about helping students with ADHD as I’ve recently had a trainee with it and I didn’t know enough about it to advise them. All help appreciated!
Julie Moore talks about the challenges of working / writing / planning work when you have a chronic condition – while this isn’t about students in the classroom, I think it’s an important area to be aware of.
Anyone following my blog will know that CELTA took over my life in August last year (2014), and will continue to dominate until the same time this year (2015). I’ve been building this list in my head for a while, and it’s finally time to get it onto the blog.
It’s arranged into categories, with subtitles and topics in bold to help you navigate. There’s a lot here, so just use the bits you need as you need them rather than trying to look at all of them – if not, you’ll end up being overwhelmed!
A quick way to find what you need it to press CTRL + F (CMD + F on a Mac) and type a key word connected to what you’re struggling with, like ‘TTT’, ‘instructions’ or ‘writing’ – this will take you straight to the relevant section.
The links on this page have been updated in March 2024 by Phil Longwell (thanks Phil!). Please let me know if any of the links are broken so I can update them, and feel free to add suggestions to the comments. I add links to the page regularly as I write/find more posts, so do keep coming back!
Before the course
CELTA is a very intensive experience, and it’s important to know what you’re getting yourself into. Take a look at these to give you an idea of what to expect.
Cambridge English has a 30-minute webinar called The Ultimate Guide to CELTA which details different types of CELTA and tells you what to expect from the course. (Thanks to Viacheslav Kushnir for telling me about this)
Seth Newsome wrote about his experience on the course, reflecting on the positives and negatives, with links to other posts he wrote about the process of doing the CELTA if you’d like a bit more depth. Tesal described the challenges of the course and what he got out of it. Rachel Daw wrote a week by week diary of her course, showing you what it’s like in depth: one MTWTF, two, three, four. Vincent Sdrigotti, an experienced teacher of French origin, wrote about the ups and downs of the whole 4-week course as well as the preparation he did before it started. Here’s one quick quote from that post:
Is the CELTA worth it? As a course and as an experience I would have to give a resounding YES!!!
Although the old interviews on Adi Rajan’s blog were called ‘Life after CELTA’, they give you a great idea of what different professionals at various stages of their careers got out of the CELTA course and why it was worth doing, even if they already had a PhD in one example! My favourite quote is from Vaidehi Kenia:
What running 5 miles daily for a month will do to your physique, the CELTA will do for your mind.
Since March 2020, fully online CELTAs have been possible. Two trainees from the first online CELTA I tutored on shared their experience and tips of their full-time four-week course: Yawen Jin and Nadia Ghauri. Trainees from a part-time fully online course run from Cork, Ireland share their experience and tips, and there are specific testimonials from Yuhi Fujioka, and from Philip Ryan, whose course was forced to move online half-way through when lockdown arrived. Joanna (who got a Pass A on an online course) asks whether you can be a good teacher after a CELTA 100% online course.
If you’re still not sure whether to do the course or not, Chia Suan Chong, a certified CELTA trainer, describes (2016) 10 things she likes about the CELTA, all of which I agree with. If you’re a more experienced teacher, you might be interested in Jason Anderson’s research on how trainees who came to the course with experience feel like they benefitted from CELTA.
Adam Simpson recommends 10 books to read before you start your CELTA [updated link]. While you’re unlikely to get through all of them (due to the expense if nothing else!) I’d definitely recommend getting copies of either 1 or 2, plus 3, and possibly also 6. Another book that you might find useful is the Ultimate Guide to CELTA by Amanda Momeni and Emma Jones which is available as an ebook (thanks for recommending this Helen Strong).
Martin Sketchley tells you how to prepare for the CELTA in 9 easy steps, with advice about choosing a centre, things to do before the course and advice about working with your peers.
It’s particularly important to build your language awareness as much as possible before the course. JoGakonga at ELT-Training has a pre-CELTA grammar webinar (30 minutes), as well as a comprehensive grammar for language teachers course on her site.
If you’d like to do a course before your course, you could invest a little money in the ELT Campus Complete CELTA Preparation Bundle, online training in key ideas, teaching methods and concepts, as well as a grammar refresher. Or you might find these two free courses useful from ELT-Training: Applying for CELTA and the CELTA Toolkit (including 50+ videos and resources on CELTA terminology, classroom management, lesson planning, teaching methods, concept checking, teaching grammar, vocabulary, phonology, receptive and productive skills, and guidance with all four CELTA assignments).
Another area that people often find overwhelming is the amount of terminology thrown at them. ELT Concourse helps you out by introducing some of it. I’ve put together a Quizlet class with most of the terminology you might come across (though remember the same thing might have different names in different places!) If you’ve never used Quizlet, here’s an introduction to it.
If you’d like to do a course before your course, you could invest a little money in the ELT Campus Complete CELTA Preparation Bundle, online training in key ideas, teaching methods and concepts, as well as a grammar refresher.
Brushing up on your technology skills could also help you out. You’re going to spend a lot of time in front of a computer, and every timesaver you can learn will make a difference. Regardless of how confident a Word user you are, it’s worth checking out my friend Liz Broomfield’s very clear posts about making the most of Word. She uses Word for Windows. If you have a Mac and can’t work it out, Google it first, then ask me and I’ll try to help – I have Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac.
How to use ‘Track changes’ to add comments to your work (useful if you want to make notes to yourself along the lines of ‘Don’t forget to finish this!’)
Keyboard shortcuts save a lot of time in the long run. These are 100 for Windows and some for Mac too. If you’ve got a long time before your CELTA, working on your touch typing will help you now and later. On a side note, set up a filing system on your computer and start naming files with lots of detail in the file name so you can find things easily in the future. “Document 1.docx” won’t help you, but “Personality adjectives and definitions NEF Pre-Int SB p6 and SB p145 U1B.docx” will. I always try to include the book, chapter and page numbers so I can use the search function to find things again quickly in the future.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic started in March 2020, teachers increasingly need to know how to teach online, particularly using Zoom. I have a post with Ideas for teaching group lessons on Zoom which provides a starting point of activities (most are not Zoom-specific and would work on other platforms). If you’ve never used Zoom before, you may want to buy a (very affordable!) copy of Teaching with Zoom: A Guide for Complete Beginners by Keith Folse (Amazon/Smashwords affiliate links). ELT Campus have a set of webinars showing how to teach English online. Sara Katsonis describes her experience of being a CELTA trainee when the course had to move from face-to-face to fully online – she got a Pass A despite (or maybe because of?) the challenges.
If you set up your goal as “I’m gonna gits me an A!” then, well, it’s a worthy goal and all, but you’ll probably give yourself an ulcer, and stress so much about whether you’re doing enough or doing well enough that your freaky-outy stress will cause you to lose focus and actually do worse. Don’t look for a magic bullet or secret formula – there is none, and trying to guess at the magical combination of factors that leads to an A will just cause you to get even more freaky-outy. Always remember that it’s not a competition, so if you see someone who seems to be doing better than you, hey, you’re in it for four weeks with that person and you are quite possibly friendly with them – you are not in a race. There is not just one gold medal. Their good work does not mean you’ll get edged out for the one top spot, because there is no “one” top spot.
By the way, when I did my CELTA, one of my fellow trainees got a Pass A with no prior teaching experience, so it is possible! However, in the courses I’ve tutored on so far, I’ve yet to see an A candidate. Update (May 2017): I’ve seen a couple of A candidates now, and they’ve been very hard-working, and followed all of these tips from Ricardo Barros, among many other things!
Nicky Salmon, a CELTA trainer, tells you how to write CELTA lesson plans to make the documents as useful as possible for you and your trainer, so that you’re ready to give your students the best possible lesson.
The ELT Concourse guide to lesson planning covers aims, procedure, staging and a useful checklist of things to consider when planning. They also show examples of present-practice-produce and test-teach-test lessons, along with a guide to helping you decide between these two possible ways of staging a lesson (there are many more!). Pete at ELT Planning lists lots of different ways of staging your lessons (though only the names) and explains why it’s been important to him in his post-CELTA career. Later he put together a post with a breakdown of how to stage different lessons, covering most (all?) of the main types of lessons you may teach on CELTA, both language and skills. He’s also got 12 tips for writing lesson plans, not all of which apply to CELTA-level courses, but which are still useful. John Hughes suggests a before/while/after you watch approach to video lessons, most of which works for reading or listening.
Jo Gakonka at ELT-Training has an introductory webinar and free sample (7 minutes) of her course lesson planning made easy covering aims, procedure, language analysis, lesson frameworks, planning from a course book and more.
When writing aims, it can be useful to consider how SMART they are, as this will help you to know when and if you’ve achieved them – Andriy Ruzhynskiy shows you how to do this in a 10-minute webinar.
I have a step-by-step guide to setting up an information gap, a speaking activity in which each student only has part of what they need to complete the task and they need to speak to others to complete the information.
Jo Gakonga has a webinar on analysing language and anticipating problems (21 minutes). She also has a webinar introducing you to PPP, TTT and TBL – three different ways of presenting language, whether grammar, vocabulary or functions (35 minutes). It will tell you what the abbreviations mean!
Jo Gakonga has a series of videos on teaching vocabulary in the free CELTA toolkit at ELT-Training (Anatomy of a word, Ideas for teaching vocabulary, Exploiting text for lexis, Digital tools for teaching vocabulary, Concept checking for vocabulary).
Adrian Underhill explains how the phonemic chart (which he put together) works in this one-hour introduction on YouTube, full of great techniques for introducing the sounds to your students. He also has a very useful blog breaking down the sounds and showing you how to find them in your mouth, and how to teach them to your students. For a shorter introduction to the same chart, try Jo Gakonga‘s webinar: introducing the phonemic chart (37 minutes). Rachel Daw recommends books to help you familiarise yourself with the phonetic alphabet (best used before the course). ELT Concourse has a series of activities to help you feel more comfortable with transcribing pronunciation.
Pronunciation Bites has a collection of links to online transcription tools, along with reviews for each. It also tells you how to download IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) scripts onto your computer, and how to use them. Don’t forget to put the phonetics into Lucida Sans Unicode font to make sure they’ll print on any computer (I hope!)
ELTchat was a weekly hour-long Twitter conversation which happens every Wednesday. In February 2012 there was a discussion, several years ago, about the IPA, including reflection on its usefulness and suggestions for how to exploit it.
Drilling is not a very fashionable technique in language teaching these days, but it’s still really useful. Jo Gakonga has a 2022 webinar on drilling when teaching beginners (15 minutes) and this older one on the same topic. She several videos on connected speech in the Phonology chapter of her CELTA toolkit. (Weak forms, Word stress, Sentence stress, Intonation).
Keeping learners interested (16 minutes) – this shows you how to tweak activities easily so they are more interesting and motivating for the students, and will help you with pacing.
Jo also has a number of videos on the use of different resources in the CELTA toolkit (Using stories for language learning, Using songs, Using dictation, Warmers and Fillers ).
Rachel Daw summarised all of the things she learnt while observing her peers and receiving feedback on TP in the first two weeks of her CELTA course in CELTA Teaching Practice: some tips (an incredibly useful post!).
Nicky Salmon offers tips on how to reflect on your teaching during CELTA courses, including examples of language you can use. As she says, reflection is a skill which takes time to learn, but is one of the most important things you can do to develop professionally.
I have dedicated blogposts with links for business English teaching and doing the FCE (Cambridge First)exam (this one is for students, but should still be useful) – just one example of the many EFL exams out there. Teaching academic English is another possible avenue. Jo Gakonga has a webinar on teaching beginners, which includes tips on drilling (22 minutes).
There are four assignments on the CELTA course. I’ve divided the links by assignment. Jo Gakonga has a general library of freely-available reputable resources for all four assignments.
Focus on the learner
Jo has a webinar introducing this assignment in the CELTA toolkit at ELT-Training. (18 minutes) Remember that the rubric might be slightly different at your centre. Her tips are still useful though.
Skills Related Task
Jo has a webinar introducing this assignment in the CELTA toolkit at ELT-Training. (16 minutes) Remember that the rubric might be slightly different at your centre. Her tips are still useful though. She also has one on using authentic materials. (38 minutes)
Lessons from the Classroom
Jo has a webinar introducing this assignment in the CELTA toolkit at ELT-Training. (12 minutes) Remember that the rubric might be slightly different at your centre. Her tips are still useful though.
Jo has a webinar introducing this assignment. (12 minutes) Remember that the rubric might be slightly different at your centre. Her tips are still useful though.
The links from the After the course section of this page will also help you here.
The main problem most people have with the CELTA is the workload. It’s not unusual for some trainees to stay up for most of the night and forget to sleep, and there are always some people who don’t hand in lesson planning documents because they ran out of time. In a 10-minute webinar, Lisa Phillips offers some tips for time management for teachers in general, but many of them apply to the CELTA course too. Remember to ask for help if you need it – you’re not bothering people, and you might find they’re in a similar situation. As for your trainers, that support is what you’re paying for!
I know I included it in the lesson planning section, but these suggestions for approaching planning are designed to make your life easier, so I think they’re worth repeating.
Don’t forget to take some time for yourself during the course. You’ll benefit from it more than you will by just pushing on through, and no matter how important the CELTA is, your health and well-being should take priority. Get enough sleep, look after yourself and take regular breaks. If you need inspiration this might help:
Here are a few of videos I send out to encourage my trainees to take a brief break – I won’t tell you what they are so it’s a lucky dip! One, Two, Three – each one is 3-4 minutes, clean, and should make you laugh!
And just in case you think you’re entering a serious profession involving a lot of work, take a look at the cynical world of EnglishDroid – he’ll burst your bubble quickly – or rather he did, because the site was deleted with no warning. This TEFLtastic post reflects upon it.
Once you’ve finished your CELTA, you’ve got all this to look forward to. But first, you need a job. Here are a few places you can look (but there are many, many more!):
To continue the reflective cycle you started on CELTA, you could keep a reflective journal, as recommended by Dale Coulter. Another option is to write your own blog, which I’ve found really useful. However you choose to do it, Jason Renshaw explains why reflection should be a vital part of any teacher’s development (and offers another suggestion for how to keep a reflective journal). Oh, and if you want to send a few pennies my way, you could investigate ELT Playbook 1, an ebook of 30 reflective tasks designed for new teachers, written by me and only costing around 5GBP/5.50€ 🙂 If you complete all five tasks from a single section, you can earn yourself a badge to put on your CV or social media, showing potential employers and/or students that you are continuing your development after the course.
The best resource on Twitter is ELTchat, a weekly one-hour chat on topics chosen by participants. Summaries of chats going back to 2010 can be found in the Summaries index on the website and cover pretty much every topic you could possibly imagine related to ELT teaching – if it’s not there, you can suggest it for a future chat.
You can join a teaching association to get support. Ask around and you might find one in the city or country you’re working in, like ELTABB in Berlin. You could also join IATEFL (UK-based) or TESOL (US-based), international organisations which also have lists on their sites of country-based affiliates, like BELTA in Belgium or TESOL France (both of these websites also have lots of other resources). Here are some of the benefits of joining a teaching association.
Cambridge English Teacher and the International Teacher Development Institute are online communities with forums, webinars and courses you can follow. CET is paid, but you can get benefits like cheaper subscriptions to journals with your membership. iTDi contains lots of free content, and a couple of more extended paid courses.
Conferences are a great source of ideas. Both IATEFL and TESOL hold multi-day conferences each year, and although the IATEFL conference is the highlight of my year (!), they can be quite expensive. IATEFL streams some sessions from the conference, and these are available to watch after the event (for example Harrogate 2014). One- or two-day local conferences can provide lots of inspiration. There are also online conferences and webinars provided for free. David Harbinson has a long list of sources for webinars to start you off.
There are various journals and magazines dedicated to ELT, full of articles from around the world with lots of great ideas and issues to think about. The IH Journal is available free online. Most teaching associations have their own newsletter or journal. Other magazines include English Teaching Professional and Modern English Teacher, both of which are subscription only – you can choose whether to get them online or as a hard copy.
Matt Noble regularly posts reflections on being a trainer on his Newbie CELTA Trainer blog, as does Ricardo Barros on his. Anthony Gaughan talks about a completely different way of doing CELTA on his Teacher Training Unplugged blog. He has also written an incredibly useful step-by-step guide explaining the process of becoming a CELTA trainer: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.
If you’d like to work on your own skills as a trainer, you might want to get yourself a copy of ELT Playbook Teacher Training, my book of 30 reflective tasks in 6 categories, as you can see below (Amazon/Smashwords affiliate links).
In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic meant lots of things changed, including the sudden need for provision of fully online CELTAs. Brendan O Sé from University College Cork, Ireland, blogged about running their first fully online CELTA. James Egerton talks about how IH Rome Manzoni took their CELTA course online and offers tips for other centres doing the same. Angelos Bollas has a demo lesson with upper intermediate students on Zoom which you might want to use to show trainees how it works from a teacher’s perspective:
Ruth Lavina shares 10 things she learnt on her CELTA, covering a whole range of categories above. I particularly like number 7, because trainees often forget it!
As I said at the start, please let me know if any of the links are broken so I can update them, and feel free to add suggestions to the comments. I hope these links are useful!
During my Delta I gathered a list of links which I returned to again and again. I’ve also seen many useful links since that I wish had been around before I started my course! I thought I’d share these with you, and I will try and keep the list up-to-date as I find more things which I consider useful. Please let me know in the comments if you think I have missed anything or if any of the links are broken.
Last updated: 25th March 2024 by Phil Longwell
Take Your Time DELTA Module One / Module Three
I set up slower, less stressful courses for DELTA Module One and Module Three. Find all the information you need here. These are the results candidates have received as of March 2024:
General
Before you decide that Delta is the right qualification for you, take a look at this list of alternatives from Jim at SpongeELT. Sam Smith did the Delta and the DipTESOL in the same year (top tip: don’t do this – it’s a heck of a lot of work!) and has compared the two qualifications. Pete Clements’ tips on How to get a DipTESOL Distinction are equally applicable to doing the Delta.
Before doing Delta I had in my mind that Delta was an impossible-to-conquer beast that only those teachers with years and years of experience would even consider taking on. Now, whilst I certainly wouldn’t recommend taking on Delta with less than two, perhaps even three years of experience, I would, however, recommend viewing it differently than I did. You see, I was looking at it the wrong way. Delta is not just exams and ridiculous amounts of assignments, LSAs, etc., it is a programme in true professional development. YOU are the starting point and Delta then makes you look at that and then look at where you want/need to be. It is hard. It is long. But, it is massively worthwhile.
ITI Istanbul have produced a webinar lasting a little over an hour, also called How to pass Delta:
Sally Hirst, who presented the ITI webinar above, is in the process of compiling a very useful website about the Delta modules – as of August 2021, it includes clear study tips on how to study for Module One, how to find what to read and how to read what you find. There is also a set of questions to help you work out what you might need to read for Delta Module Two, though much of the reading you do is applicable to all three modules.
I collected all of the Delta posts I have written on my blog into one page. The one which is probably most useful is called Preparing for the Delta, including advice about some good books to read before the course and a lot of ways you can improve/brush up on your Word skills in preparation for all of the typing you’ll end up doing. I’ve also written one about Delta grade statistics, summarising statistics from 2014-2019 for each of the three modules.
Lizzie Pinard, who got a Distinction in all three modules, has been writing an incredibly useful series of posts about the Delta since she finished her course. Here is her annotated list of the resources she read before and during the course. Sue Swift regularly posts useful materials on The Delta Course blog.
Alex Walls has a selection of useful Delta resources, including reading lists for each module.
Anthony Ash did the Delta full-time in Autumn 2014, and wrote a series of posts about his thoughts on various things that come up during thhttps://ashowski.wordpress.com/?s=deltae course. These cover the highs and lows of someone going through Delta, and give a good overview of what the course is like. He has also written a series of posts offering a general introduction to the course, particularly useful if you have no idea what it is or how it works!
Olya Sergeeva has written about her Delta too, as has Emma Johnston and Dr Harriet Lowe. Harriet talks about the gaps between L2 teaching and L2 research in her series of 5 posts, as well as what she feels she got out of the course as a whole.
If you’re considering doing a Distance version of the course, but are struggling to find a local tutor, Alex Case may be able to help.
If you are worried about academic writing as part of your Delta course, you may be interested in courses offered by CELT Athens. [Note: I haven’t seen or done this course, but I think the premise is interesting, and I know it’s a reputable centre. The inclusion of the link does not constitute a recommendation!]
Finally, although this is advice designed for MA students, I think Laura Patsko’s tips on how to recover from an MA can definitely be applied to Delta candidates too!
Module One
I’ve created a Take Your Time DELTA Module One course. It runs over 30 weeks, with about 3 hours of work per week. There are two options: September to May for the June exam or March to November for the December exam.
Here’s what two participants said about the first version of the course (more testimonials are available here):
[Please note: some of these links are based on the old version of the exam. Many of them are still relevant, but please check carefully that the descriptions of the questions match up with the updated version of the exam.]
ELT Concourse has a comprehensive Module One preparation course, which is completely free. You probably won’t need many of the other resources here if you use that, but just in case…
I created a ‘Delta’ group on Quizlet, which contains all of the Delta-related flashcards I made/could find. Quizlet is a great resource to help you brush up on your terminology, which is especially useful for parts one and two of Paper One of the exam. If you have never used Quizlet, here is my guide to show you how to make the most of it. There is also an app available for Apple devices.
James Fuller has a guide showing you how to prepare for the exam. Dale Coulter created a step-by-step guide to the Delta exam, divided into one post for each of the two papers: Paper One; Paper Two. Lizzie Pinard did the same: Paper One; Paper Two. She also created a list of useful resources to help you revise for the exam, as well as a countdown which you can use as a last-minute checklist to make sure you know everything, or a starting point to plan your studies. Ricardo Barros describes how he prepared for the exam, as does Yuliya Speroff. Ha Truong talks about how she got a Distinction in the Module 1 exam in December 2023 with just 3 months of study. I’ve written a post with ideas about how to lay out your answers in the exam and information on how I prepared for it (though this is now perhaps out of date due to changes in the exam since I took it).
If you’re trying to decide where to do your Delta Module Two course, Sue Swift has a set of useful questions.
Information about all of my Delta Module Two assignments is available on my Delta page, including a summary of feedback on two passes (one merit for an essay) and two fails, so you can get some idea of the problems I had and what I learnt from my experience. At the other end of the scale, Ricardo Barros tells us how he got a distinction in at least three of his LSAs (nobody ever finds out about LSA4!) and shares his bibliographies. He has also shared the bibliographies from Konstantinos’ LSAs, mostly focussing on young learners. Stewart offers practical tips for writing your background essay and lesson plan based on his experience from his first two LSAs.
Lizzie Pinard gives you her reading list and feedback from her LSA1 on lexis (collocations), and Tiago Bueno goes into a lot of detail about his LSA3 on reading. Jim Fuller from Sponge ELT has a list of tips for the whole of Module 2, along with his reference lists for all of the assignments he wrote. Alex Walls talks about how to succeed in Module 2. Martin Hajek shares his Module 2 tips, including a list of books he found it useful to read.
Christina Rebuffet-Broadus and Jennie Wright have written a book called ‘Experimental Practice in ELT‘ which came directly out of their experiences of Delta Module 2. It includes lesson plans and ideas for the five most popular topics for the Experimental Practice part of the Professional Development Assignment. It’s available from the-round for a very reasonable price.
Mike Harrison ran the Experimental Practice Academy blog, including interviews with various people about their Delta experimental practice.
And if you need a bit of a laugh, I would highly recommend The stages of a Delta assignment, all of which I have definitely experienced!
Module Three
I’ve created a Take Your Time DELTA Module Three ELT Specialism course (the course plan module). It runs over 36 weeks, with 20 live sessions across that time. There are two options: September to May for the June submission date or March to November for the December submission date. I also run a Module 3 ELT Management course from September to May for the June submission date (note that all the information below is for ELT Specialism).
Read this before you start writing anything: Lina Gordyshevskaya has practical tips which will make completing your Module 3 assignment more efficient and hopefully save you time and stress.
Information about my Module 3 assignment, on teaching exam classes, with a specific focus on IELTS reading and writing, is available on my Delta page.
Jim Fuller at Sponge ELT has written a very comprehensive guide to what Module 3 is, ideas for how to approach it, and supplied a very long reading list you could use as a starting point. Martin Hajek reflected on his Module 3 experience, and talked about why he recommends you find a tutor to help you, or at least somebody who can read your assignment. Jordan Putman got a referral the first time he submitted, then a pass when he rewrote it – he shares the experience and his referral report, which is very useful reading in terms of finding out what Cambridge require of you in your assignment.
Yuliya Speroff has written about her whole Delta experience, and has included her reference list for the Module 3 EAP syllabus she wrote. Lizzie Pinard has guides to writing each section of the Module 3 assignment:
Please remember that Cambridge looks on plagiarism very seriously – if you copy sections of other assignments, you are likely to be disqualified from the course.
Skills
Skills are reading, writing, listening and speaking.
Lizzie Pinard’s Delta Notes* is a series Lizzie has produced based on the notebooks she kept during her Delta course. Here are her notes on:
Sue Swift has a 9-minute presentation introducing skills and sub-skills, with particular reference to listening and speaking. Rachael Roberts has a post which asks What do we mean by speaking skills? This is useful as a starting point to help you think about sub-skills and come up with a more specific speaking aim for an LSA.
I have a list of online bookmarks, which I constantly add too. The links below take you to the bookmarks tagged ‘Delta’ and:
Systems are grammar, lexis, phonology and discourse management.
I looked at conditionals (grammar) and multi-part verbs (lexis) for my two systems LSAs. For the latter, I found a couple of particularly useful articles in the Macmillan Dictionaries magazine, including one about the pronunciation of phrasal verbs, by Adrian Underhill. You can find my full bibliography in my assignment on my Delta page.
Lizzie Pinard’s Delta Notes* is a series Lizzie has produced based on the notebooks she kept during her Delta course. Here are her notes on:
Emma Gore-Lloyd is doing the Delta at IH Seville intensively in autumn 2014. She’s writing a series of posts including some reflection questions for her weekly blogging.
I have a list of bookmarks on diigo to which I regularly add. I tag all of the ones I think are relevant to Delta. You can subscribe to the list to find out when I add anything new.
Here are all of the useful websites I can find to help students preparing for the Cambridge First Certificate exam. Please let me know if there are any broken links, or if you find something you think I should add.
Great website, full of tips, especially for Reading, Use of English and Writing. I’d definitely recommend students look at the word bank every day, and that teachers try to make use of those words in their classes to motivate students to use it! There is also a bank of writing showcasing all of the different text types, including teacher feedback.
Alex Case’s excellent collection of FCE worksheets.
FCE Result (affiliate link – I will earn money from Amazon if you buy anything after clicking this link),the OUP coursebook, has online exercises for each unit of the book. (via Anna Yermolenko)
Two places to find online flashcards to play games with on the Quizlet website, to download onto smartphones or to print off and use in class. If you’ve never used Quizlet, here’s my guide.
Oxford Word Skills Intermediate and Advanced (affiliate links) can also help you to build your vocabulary, and they have online exercises too. (via Anna Yermolenko)
The rest of the links are organised by paper. The links above also include some information for each paper, and there doesn’t seem to be anything specific for Paper 1: Reading that isn’t just a practice test.
This link will take you to Use of English part 4 Key Word Transformation information and exercises. At the top of the page you can also find links to Reading and the other Use of English sections.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=LxCoEdFUcBw A video showing two students doing part 1 of the Speaking paper. Once you have watched the video, click on the links to the right to take you to the next section. All four sections are available.
Nicola Prentis has written Teach First Certificate, a beginners guide for teachers showing how to approach the exam, available on Amazon as a paperback or ebook [affiliate links].
Rachel Tsateri has a list of tips and links for teaching B1 and B2 exams both online and offline.
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