Greetings to everyone Are you thinking of taking a CELTA course or have you already been accepted for it? If so, you might be wondering what preparation you need. In today’s newsletter, we will look at the best ways to prepare for the course. 
5 things to do before CELTA While you might be OK to pass a CELTA without any preparation, some research and preparation has never hurt anyone; and if you can pass CELTA with more than just a PASS, like a PASS B or PASS A, why not, right? When you’re planning, conducting and reviewing real lessons back-to-back and juggling input sessions, written assignments and an average of 20 hours homework a week, you may come to regret not taking advantage of the quiet before the storm. So, let’s dive into the preparation before starting the CELTA course! BRUSH UP YOUR GRAMMAR Learn parts of speech and names of tenses. Knowing your grammar – at least the basics – takes off some pressure during your CELTA course, which (as you might be aware of) is not a walk in the park. As such, while preparing for your classes, you can focus mostly on HOW you will teach the grammar to your students; you then don’t also need to worry about learning, knowing, and understanding it yourself. Sounds good, right? How to improve your knowledge of verb tenses before starting your CELTA course? Stephen Beale, who started CELTA Helper, answers this question in his blog. He says, that CELTA is very much about ‘just-in-time learning’, i.e. you need some knowledge of the basic rules but you only need to have the detailed knowledge of what you are teaching that day. We also recommend reading: Grammar for Teachers by John Seely How English Works by M.Swan & C.Walker Grammar for English Language Teachers by M.Parrott Practical English Usage by Michael Swan READ THE BOOKS AND LOOK INTO TERMINOLOGY It is important to know that it is not only grammar that you'll be clarifying and presenting. Language is a set of systems and skills: SYSTEMS | SKILLS | - Grammar
- Lexis / Vocabulary
- Functional Language
- Pronunciation
| - Reading
- Listening
- Speaking
- Writing
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When you start your CELTA course, there are a lot of acronyms you need to get your head around such as TTT, STT, CCQs, ICQs, PPP, etc. It can all be a bit overwhelming and you have a lot of other things to think about such as your lesson planning, assignments and input sessions that you need to attend. Do some background reading into some of the theories and ideas behind language acquisition and learning. You are likely to be provided with a list of books you will have to read before CELTA. We highly recommend reading Scott Thornbury’s A-Z of ELT that offers a quick reference for all those hard-to-learn acronyms and abbreviations, and as everything is in alphabetical order you can find terms quite quickly. Each teacher training centre provides the candidate with CELTA glossary where you will find all the terms and definitions you will need during the course. You can also check: CELTA TERMINOLOGY GLOSSARY USE AN ADVANCED LEARNERS’ DICTIONARY CELTA is a course in communicative methodology. Translation may be used ONLY when students need or benefit from it. So, most of the times you will have to DEMONSTRATE and EXPLAIN, not translate the unknown words. This can be a difficult habit to get into both for native speakers who naturally use skills of guessing new words from context (skills that you will be trying to teach your students) rather than reaching for a dictionary all the time and non-native teachers. Still, try to keep a good Advanced level learners’ dictionary around and keep it in mind when reading something pretentious or playing Scrabble, because even if you don’t use it before the course to improve your own vocabulary or pronunciation, you will certainly need it during the course to help you explain the meaning or teach the pronunciation of words and expressions to your students. LEARN THE PHONEMIC SCRIPT On CELTA, you will learn that new language should always be presented through the meaning, form and pronunciation framework (MFP). You will have to focus on individual sounds, words and features of connected speech even if you have never done it before. You will also need this when anticipating problems your students might have and when doing language analysis for your teaching practice. Like certain types of grammar, learning the secret code of the phonemic script is something that mathematical/ analytical types get into straight away. You are not expected to be able to write whole sentences out in phonemics without a dictionary even at the end of the course. However, you can get into and practice this with the help of a dictionary, looking up words you have never known how to pronounce (e.g. foreign words in English), and looking at phonetics more generally and using it to try and pronounce sounds that don’t exist in your language. TRY TO TEACH ANYONE YOU CAN CELTA is a course designed for teachers who have no experience… but that does not mean it will be easy. You don’t need any previous experience to take the course. However, once you choose to do so, be prepared to dedicate a significant amount of time to study while you are taking it. It is better if you try teaching before enrolling to the course. Try to find someone among your friends or family who will just sit down and let you teach. Take a coursebook and spend 10 minutes a day teaching them to see what issues come up, what difficulties might arise. Feel it before the first day on the CELTA, because you might have no idea what is going on in the classroom. You can also observe other teachers who teach on different levels and see if it is really for you. As you can see, there are quite a lot of things to do before the CELTA course so that you could hit the ground running when it starts! 
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