CELTA at IH Sevastopol

What is CELTA?

CELTA stands for ‘Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults’. It is a four-week full-time initial teacher training course, designed to introduce you to the basics of teaching English as a foreign language.

It is suitable for native English speakers, and non-natives who have achieved an English level of at least C1 on the CEFR.

Why do CELTA?

CELTA is internationally recognised as an introductory qualification for English teachers, and opens the door to good quality schools around the world.

For those who have already been teaching for a while, it is a good introduction to Communicative Language Teaching.

What does CELTA involve?

During the four-week course, you will do a total of six hours of observed teaching practice, where you try out what you are learning in a real classroom situation.

From theory to practice

To help you do this successfully, you will receive 120 hours of input covering a wide range of topics. including how to teach grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and the four language skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking), as well as how to plan your lessons, use materials effectively and manage the classroom, among many other things. You will be introduced to a wide range of activties which you can take straight into the classroom.

Before and after each observed lesson you will work with tutors and your peers to ensure that you improve as much as possible over the course of your CELTA.
There are also four short written assignments during the course, one per week. There is no exam: assessment is based on your written assignments and your observed teaching practice.

How much is it?

Anyone who registers for our courses before 1st June 2014 will get a 15% discount, meaning the whole four-week CELTA will only cost you £850, including Cambridge registration fees, considerably cheaper than it is in most places, where it can cost up to £1300! Even with travel costs and accommodation, you will pay considerably less than at many other centres.

If you register after 1st June, it will still only cost £1000.

IH Sevastopol can help you to arrange travel and accommodation, and anything else you may require during your stay.

Why do CELTA at IH Sevastopol?

Every summer International House Sevastopol runs two CELTA courses: one in July and one in August. In 2014 the dates are:

• June 30th-July 25th
• July 28th-August 23rd

The course is run by two experienced trainers, Olga Stolbova, the Director of IH Sevastopol, and a guest trainer from Kharkiv, Ukraine. In July 2014, I will be training as a CELTA tutor, so I will be there as a third trainer if you decide to join the first course.

You will be teaching students in a private language school in a classroom setting much like you might expect to go into once you have finished your CELTA course.

International House has affiliates all over the world, and while we cannot guarantee you a job, we can offer advice on where to apply for work once your course has finished.

Sevastopol itself is a fascinating city, and at the weekends when you have finished planning and writing assignments, you can explore its history or go out into beautiful Crimea. Sevastopol and Crimea have been in the news a lot recently, and this is your chance to discover what it’s like here first-hand! You can read a lot more about Sevastopol on our site, and see pictures and videos of the city, including BBC Top Gear‘s visit in November 2013.

Here’s what Ryan Williams, a Canadian who trained on our 2013 CELTA, said about the course:

I left the Canadian oil field and started my teaching career with a TESOL certification. Within my first year of teaching it was clear that I wanted more education to fall back on. The decision to take a CELTA course was an easy one and based on some key factors, career advancement, stability, self-confidence and professionalism played a key role.

IH Sevastopol offers a great experience in a city rich with culture and history. Also, the early schedule for the course gives you a competitive edge when interviewing for September start. The tutors are top notch and committed to providing you with the tools needed in a modern teaching environment in order to be successful in the classroom. A four week course is intense, no question. However, by applying yourself the rewards are fantastic. I can attest by saying that a CELTA certification has opened doors for me that we’re not achievable in the past and I am now enjoying a fruitful career with teaching English.

You can read more about the CELTA course on our website, and download an application form.

Happy students and trainees at the end of the July 2013 course

So what are you waiting for? Contact us and find out how you can take the first step of an exciting new stage in your life!

Teaching essay writing

Today I presented a seminar with ideas about teaching essay writing, with a particular focus on FCE and IELTS exam tasks. It’s part of the monthly seminar series at International House Sevastopol.

The slides from the presentation and all of the resources can be found below. You can download everything from slideshare, for which you will need to create a free account. The links in the presentation are clickable. You’ll find full details of all of the activities in the notes which accompany each slide, which you’ll be able to see when you download the presentation.

Three different types of IELTS essay question (adapted from DC IELTS):

IELTS questions to classify by type (adapted from DC IELTS):

Potato talks from Thinking in the EFL Class by Tessa Woodward (published by Heibling Languages – affiliate link)

FCE essay to put in order (via Pavla Milerski):

Essay structure (via Pavla Milerski):

Photo from ELTpics by @yearinthelifeof, under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license

I’d like to thank Olga Stolbova from IH Sevastopol and Pavla Milerski from IH Brno for helping me to put the seminar together.

The next one in the series will take place on February 22nd 2014, on the theme of teaching stress patterns in pronunciation. Olga will present it. If you’re in the area, we’d love to see you there!

A brief introduction to online professional development (IH DoS conference 2014)

I’ve just returned from my first International House Director of Studies conference, which I will hopefully write about later this week.

I did a ten-minute session as part of a ‘speed-dating’ format, where I presented the same idea five or six times – I lost count! Here are my slides, along with the associated links, with a commentary aimed at Directors of Studies, but which will hopefully be useful to anyone who reads it.

Shelly Terrell

This is Shelly Terrell, one of the most prolific sharers of content online. Her blog is Teacher Reboot Camp, where she has a lot of information about using technology in class, along with other areas of teaching, as well as the 30 Goals Challenge. She also does webinars every Friday for the American TESOL institute. I chose this picture to start my presentation because it sums up why I love online CPD – great people, a caring community, and lots of ideas.

Twitter

This is where my online professional development started. I like Twitter because it’s completely open – you can follow anyone, anyone can follow you. Although I use it less now than I used to, I still look at it briefly every day, and use it a lot during conferences.

A tweet is 140 characters, the same length as a text message. Here’s an example:

‘@’ introduces someone’s Twitter name (or ‘handle’). When it is blue, you can click on it and choose to follow that person or organisation, so that you can read what they are writing about. In this example @KatySDavies and @BCseminars are clickable.

‘#’ introduces a topic on Twitter (or ‘hashtag’). You can click on it to read everything people are saying about that topic. This example includes the hashtag #eltchat, which is one of the most popular hashtags for the English teaching community.

Every Wednesday, at 12pm and 9pm UK time a one-hour conversation takes place using the #eltchat hashtag. The topic for each chat is announced beforehand, and anyone can join in simply by including the hashtag in their tweets. At the end of the chat, one participant summarises the conversation and turns it into a blogpost. The blogposts are collected in the #eltchat summaries index, one of the most useful resources on the web. #eltchat started in October 2010, and previous chats have covered an incredibly wide range of topics. Some chats that might be particularly relevant for Directors of Studies include:

• What makes a good Director of Studies?
• What can teachers learn from good managers?
• Time management for teachers

For a more in-depth introduction to using Twitter, take a look at my beginner’s guide.

Facebook

There are a lot of pages on facebook which are aimed at English teachers. Some are location-specific (e.g. Czech Republic, Turkey), some are by authors (e.g. Hugh Dellar and Andrew Walkley) and others are by publishers (e.g. Richmond ELT).

As far as I’m concerned, the most useful page is Teaching English – British Council, which has nearly 1.5 million likes as I write this. Ann Foreman, who runs it, posts a whole range of links, starts discussions, and shares ideas. It’s a thriving community.

For many teachers, facebook is probably the easiest way of accessing online professional development, as if you already use facebook, it’s a simple matter of clicking ‘like’ on a couple of pages.

Blogs

Since I started blogging about three years ago, I have changed dramatically as a teacher. While a lot of this is due to the fact I started using social media professionally at the same time and have now done my Delta, blogging has made me more reflective, and forced me to up my game in terms of the materials I produce, knowing they will be used by other people.

There are a huge range of English teaching blogs out there. You can find some of the ones I follow in my blogroll on the right of this page. I also have a Blog Starter List – if you think you should be on there, let me know!

To keep track of the blogs I follow I use a ‘reader’ called Feedly. It’s available online and as a free app. There are many readers out there, and this is just one example. You put the addresses of the blogs you follow into the reader, and it then becomes a one-stop shop, by automatically including all new posts from those blogs, meaning you don’t get a full email inbox, and you don’t have to remember to look at each blog individually on the off-chance there’s a new post. The image above shows you my list of posts to be read at the moment.

Two blogs which are particularly good for Directors of Studies are Be The DOS by Josh Round at St. George International, and The Secret DOS, which is incredibly funny, particularly his post about timetabling.

Webinars

A webinar is an online seminar, normally videoed, which you watch from the comfort of your own home. A lot of organisations provide webinars, including OUP, Cambridge, Macmillan, Pearson and British Council. My favourite ones so far were the 10-minute webinars at the International House 60th anniversary online conference. Click on the picture below to see them all.

 

There are now webinars on an incredibly wide range of different topics, so if you have one or two teachers who need input on a particularly topic, but not enough to warrant a full CPD session, you could refer them to a webinar, which you can then discuss with them afterwards. If you want to find a webinar on a particular topic, use the #eltchat hashtag on Twitter or one of the facebook pages mentioned above to ask people to point you in the right direction.

Questions

The most important thing about social media is how supportive the ELT community is. If you have any questions about anything mentioned in this post, please don’t hesitate to ask. Good luck!

Why I love working for International House

International House (IH) is 60 years old. It was started in Cordoba in 1953, by John and Brita Haycraft, and has since grown to encompass 156 schools in 52 countries at the time of writing. John Haycraft’s biography, Adventures of a Language Traveller, which I’ve just finished reading, is a fascinating insight into where the whole organisation came from and how it grew in its first few decades.

I’m in my sixth year with IH. I spent three years in Brno, Czech Republic, 2 in Newcastle, UK, and am now in Sevastopol, Ukraine. I also did three summer schools in the UK for the same school, although it changed from IH to Kaplan while I worked for them. During my time with the organisation I have been given a huge amount of opportunities, which I don’t believe would have been available to me in quite the same way anywhere else:

Training

• Support with learning to teach young learners and teens, right from day one of my first summer school, the week after I graduated from university;
• Post-CELTA training seminars throughout my first year at IH Brno, building on everything we’d covered during the initial CELTA course;
• The chance to do IH certificates in teaching Business English and Young Learners, as well as the Certificate in Advanced Methodology, through IH Brno;
• Access to online teacher training via the IH Online Teacher Training Institute, in the form of the IH Certificate in Online Tutoring, as well as a short course on dogme;
• Financial and moral support to do my Delta, through IH Newcastle.

Presentations and conferences

• The opportunity to attend, and later to present at, local conferences in Brno and nearby cities, giving me the conference bug;
• The time to attend conferences in France and in the UK (thanks IH Newcastle!);
• Regular online conferences and webinars, which I’ve also been able to present at. As I write this, the 60th anniversary conference is taking place;
• The International House John Haycraft Classroom Exploration scholarship, which gave me the chance to attend IATEFL for the first time – although it didn’t have to go to someone connected to IH, the support of the organisation for potential IATEFL attendees is hugely important.

Building my career

• Shaun Wilden inspected IH Brno as part of maintaining IH standards, and during a throwaway comment, mentioned the community of teachers on Twitter – a sentence which changed my life!
• Progressing within the same organisation has helped me go from teacher to Director of Studies (my current position) at the pace I wanted, via other responsibilities on the way;
• Being given the opportunity to write a column for the IH Journal.

And the rest…

• Feeling part of a huge, but incredibly friendly and supportive organisation;
• The chance to move to different countries through the IH transfer system;
• The focus on training and development which has shaped who I am as a teacher;
• The high quality of teaching expected from all of us, pushing us to be better and to help our students to the best of our abilities;
• The affiliation system which means that every school is unique and local, while at the same time meeting the strict IH standards which give you confidence as a teacher, and recourse to complain if you ever need to (which thankfully I haven’t!);
• Being able to meet people from around the world, both fellow teachers, and particularly my students in Newcastle;
• The chance to move to a completely new country, and feel welcomed there no matter what happens;
• The influence of IH on the ELT world in general, from the creation of the CELTA, to the number of past and present IH teachers who have gone on to write coursebooks and materials, run schools, and do all kinds of amazing things. (Side note: When Brita Haycraft was presented with the 2013 Lifetime Achievement award at the British Council’s ELTons awards, Liz Soars asked members of the audience to put their hands up if they’d never had any dealings with IH – from an audience of about 400, nobody’s hand appeared!)

It’s been an amazing experience for me so far, and I’m very proud to be part of such a great organisation. I hope it’s a relationship which continues for many years yet 🙂

(Banners shamelessly stolen from the IH World facebook page)

 

Moving to a new country (Sevastopol)

A few days after I arrived in Sevastopol, Lea Sobocan posted this on facebook:

I have a request for my PLN – more specifically for the segment of you who have experienced living in another country/culture.

I’m currently discussing moving to another country/immigration with my students and I’d really appreciate any thoughts, feelings, difficulties and joys to be found in living abroad. Preferably in audio form, but whatever works for you.

Some of the people I’ve spoken with saw immigration to another country as something you just get up and do and they seem to be certain everyone will greet them with open arms. I’d like to offer a more balanced view and a first-hand account of someone who had this experience.

Any help, in form of text, audio clip or similar will be greatly appreciated.

Lea had helped me before by recording a clip about her favourite TV show, so I thought it was only fair I return the favour. I recorded this audioboo about moving to Sevastopol, then promptly forgot about it:

A few days later I was surprised to get a message from Claire Hart telling me that she had created a series of activities around my two-minute recording. I asked her to share the result with you, and I think you’ll agree, it’s a pretty good lesson. Thanks Claire!

How Claire used the recording

Killing a bit of time before the first class of the day, I found myself reading my Twitter feed. One of the tweets that popped up was from Sandy Millin. It was a link to an audio recording she had posted on Audioboo where she talked about her experience of recently relocating to Sevastopol, Ukraine. The class I was about to start teaching was a C1 group who had asked for practice listening to British people speaking because they tend to find their British colleagues difficult to understand. I’d been using excerpts from BBC television series and BBC world service podcasts with them over the previous weeks, but Sandy’s recording seemed to provide a refreshing alternative to that.

I decided to take a chance and improvise an activity around Sandy’s recording with just 2 minutes to go before the class started. This was a bit of a challenge, but I found that having to think on my feet rather than going through a pre-planned, pre-rehearsed routine made me more present and alert. What was striking is how surprised the learners were to learn that Sandy is a real person and she’s talking about experiences that she has really had. I suppose this just goes to show how learners get used to listening to people playing fictional characters having scripted conversations with each other. When I told them that I actually know Sandy, their enthusiasm shot up even more. I’ve used this recording with several groups at a range of levels and, interestingly, all of them seem to have understood more of what Sandy said than they usually understand when we listen to a recording designed for English learning. Even my A2 group could accurately recount the key points that Sandy made and include some of the detail.

The “real-ness” of this activity was particularly palpable when I used the recording with a group of eight, five of whom have moved to Germany from either Turkey, Hungary, Russia, Poland or Romania. When I asked them to consider why people would move to a foreign country, what difficulties you can face when you make that move and how you can overcome them, the non-Germans in the group were able to tap into their real experiences and share those with the others. When I asked them to write short texts evaluating the benefits and difficulties of moving to a foreign country, what I got back from them were honest and touching accounts of how hard moving to a foreign country can be, but how it can help you to find a better quality of life. They put a lot of effort into writing these texts because the topic was important to them. Even the learners who haven’t had the experience of moving to another country themselves, seemed to have a lot of empathy for Sandy and were keenly interested in what is going on in her life.

The lesson skeleton

1. Look at the statement “I’ve just moved to Sevastopol”

• What have I done?
• When did I do it?

2. Ask the learners if they know where Sevastopol is. Can they find it on a map of Europe? What do they know about Ukraine? Which countries are its neighbours? What languages do they speak there? What food do they eat? Have they ever visited this part of the world?

Memorial to Heroic Defenders of Sevastopol

3. Show them information about the population of Sevastopol, its climate and its landmarks and ask them to say what questions this information gives you the answers to. You can also use this as an opportunity to practise saying long numbers, comparing temperatures or discussing what sights they enjoy visiting.

Chersonesus, an Ancient Greek town in the suburbs of Sevastopol

4. Ask them if they think Sevastopol would be a good place to go on holiday to. Why/ why not?

5. Ask them to brainstorm reasons why someone would move to Sevastopol. Then ask them to speculate about why Sandy, an English teacher who is originally from England but who’s lived in a few different countries, would move to Sevastopol.

6. Listen to the recording and give them level-appropriate questions to answer. A lower-level question could be: What words does Sandy think you should learn first when you move to another country and why? A higher-level question could be: What difficulties did Sandy face when she arrived in Sevastopol and how has she been able to overcome them?

7. As a follow-up or homework task, you can ask the learners to write a text on the benefits and difficulties of living a foreign country.

This presentation has slides connected to each of the steps in the lesson skeleton:

(You can download it by clicking ‘slideshare’ and logging in – it’s free to create an account, and you can link via facebook if you want to.)

What I’ve learned here is that if you make a recording where you honestly describe interesting, unusual or important experiences in your life and share it through sites like Audioboo, you can produce meaningful authentic audio material that learners will respond really well to because it’ll resonate with them and their lives. The response I’ve received to using this recording has been extremely positive and my learners are now keen to know what Sandy does next.

About Claire

Claire Hart teaches general English, business English and technical English to university students and business people in Southern Germany. She frequently presents on topics such as using authentic materials, mobile learning and teaching technical English at ELT conferences. She’s also a course book and teacher’s book author and an online materials writer, specialising in business English and ESP materials.

How I’m learning Chinese* (and why I should be learning Russian instead)

I’m a bit of a language addict. When I’m not trying to learn a new language I always feel a bit like there’s something missing from my life.

In April last year my school offered a short beginner’s course in Mandarin which lasted for 10 weeks. I joined it, and decided that Mandarin would be my next language – it’s different to anything I’ve learnt before and is a real challenge, but at the same time, it has a logic to it that appeals a lot. It will also open the door to whole culture that has always interested me: I’ve always wanted to visit China, although I’ve never really wanted to live there. Unfortunately, as the course finished my life became full of other things, namely London 2012 and then Delta.

So it was that I forgot pretty much everything I studied last year. However, I always planned to pick up Mandarin again as soon as my Distance Delta course was finished. I even got two Chinese books for my birthday: Teach Yourself Mandarin Chinese*, and the Chinese Visual Dictionary. Last week I finally got started, with the support of my friend Catherine, who studied languages with me at uni and is joining me in my quest.

Catherine and I in Bavaria, where we hatched our Mandarin plan…

We’re using the 15-Minute Chinese book to get us started, and create some form of (almost) daily study habit, with the plan of moving on to the other books later. We’re going to Skype every Thursday and try out what we’ve learnt that week. I’ve created Quizlet sets for each page we’ve studied so far, which have been a very useful step in my learning, especially in terms of recognising characters. I’ve also been using two courses on memrise: Learn Basic Chinese: read a menu and HSK level 1 – introductory Mandarin. Memrise is one of my new favourite websites, and I’ve become a bit of an addict. They have just (a month ago) released an app, which I have on my phone and tablet, and I also use it online at least twice a day. So far I can introduce myself, count to 99 (although I’m still mixing up 6, 7 and 9 a lot) and talk a little about my family. I can also read a Chinese menu (I’ve pretty much finished that memrise course) and recognise some other basic characters. This is the first time I’ve tried to learn a language without classes or a teacher, and I’m hoping Catherine and I can motivate each other, as I find studying alone to be very easy to back out of!

So why should I be learning Russian then? Well, in September, visa-permitting, I will be moving to Sevastopol in Ukraine to join the team at IH Sevastopol as a DoS (Director of Studies)**.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Despite being in Ukraine, the city is mostly Russian-speaking, as it is the base for the Russian Black Sea fleet. To that end, I’ve been using memrise to learn the Russian alphabet, and have started to pick up a few basic phrases. It helps that I already speak some Czech, as some of the basic words are pretty similar once I’ve deciphered the letters. I plan on learning more before leaving the UK, but for now I want to focus on Mandarin as I’ve been planning to study it for so long!

I’m really enjoying the challenge of deciphering another (two) language(s), and I’m looking forward to my new adventures in Ukraine. It looks like a beautiful country and a very exciting job, in a school which is growing fast. It will be my first experience at management level too, although I’ll still be doing a lot of teaching. If you’d like to join me, the school is also looking for a teacher who enjoys teaching young learners. Let me know if you’re interested and I can put you in touch with the director of the school.

So for now, 再见 and до свидания. I’ve got some studying to do… 🙂

*All book links are to Amazon, and I will get 10% if you buy after clicking these links. Thank you!