Celta - core and marginal issues

This posting carries on from my previous one, starting with a summary of some key points and then adding some thoughts about what really matters in the programmes.

As I noted above, Celta programmes are quite varied, so it makes little sense to generalise about 'the Celta method' etc based on the experience of one (or a small number) of programmes. And therefore, if you do want to generalise (e.g. in saying that the programme is outdated) you need to refer to what they do all have in common - i.e. the syllabus and assessment criteria.

The courses are taught (and internally assessed) by experienced classroom teachers. That's generally a strength of the programme, especially as compared with many university qualifications, taught by lecturers who don't spend much time, if any, actually teaching nowadays. However, that can also be a limitation. Teachers have a tendency to get stuck in their ways and may have their own particular obsessions with one aspect of language or learning.

My advice is mainly for trainees to turn a blind eye to these (i.e. including my own, if I happen to be your trainer), unless it really impacts on your performance, in which case talk it over with the visiting assessor. I'd say exactly the same about working or training with anyone. You can learn a lot from other people, even if some of their beliefs are foolish.

For the record, in assessing many Celta courses in various places, I haven't seen much reference to multiple intelligences, learning styles etc. For me, these are nonsensical, but largely harmless distractions. And it's been a long time since PPP type lessons were the norm in Celta courses (in my own experience, not since the 1980s.

In some areas of teaching there are genuine differences of emphasis - which just represent those which are common throughout our field. For example, some teachers and trainers see a value in writing up phonemic transcription on the board and in handouts. I personally don't. Some believe students should always do a gist task before a detailed task. Again, I don't. Some believe that language should always and only be taught in the context of an authentic text. Another one I don't go along with. And the list could go on.

I'm happy to discuss and justify my points of view with whoever, but I'm not in the business of forcing them on anyone. Compliance behaviour really isn't much use in terms of a person's long-term development as a teacher - it's much better if they can see the rationale for doing something a particular way - and also that teaching is a matter of making decisions based on judgements about student learning, rather than implementing overlearned routines.

Anyway, I don't see my own views as especially dogmatic - and in any case, they've changed through reading more and through experience - and I don't see much really dogma of this type out there in the courses I see or the trainers I meet. And most the feedback from trainees (generally provided anonymously) is pretty positive.

In the end, these differences of opinion or practice make very little difference to the core business of Celta courses, which is the basics of effective language teaching: an opportunity for the novice teachers to show (others and, more importantly, themselves) that they can analyse language or texts from the point of view of student difficulties, define clear and relevant learning aims for a lesson based on helping students with those difficulties, select appropriate activities and resources to help them achieve those aims, sequence them logically, give clear and effective instructions, manage the class so that students can complete the activities and give the students accurate, clear and positive feedback on their achievement.

When did that become out of date?

Martin McMorrow Academic English Podcast

I've been a Celta trainer since 1994. I've trained up several people as trainers and assessed quite a few courses in different places. Here are some comments related to concerns that I've read online about the course. 

I think it's important to acknowedge the variation between Celta courses. Here in Auckland, Celta is available as a four or five week intensive in private language schools, as a 3 month part time course in a Uni language centre and as a component in a 6 month diploma in second language teaching at a Polytechnic. There are significant differences in staffing, timetabling, the content of input sessions, the context of teaching practice (e.g. more ESOL / EFL; more or less textbook based etc) in each course.

 

If you multiply those differences across the hundreds of centres in diverse institutions across the world, it becomes clear that generalisations about Celta method etc need to be made with some care. If someone is talking about their own experience as a trainee on a particular course, I think they have some obvious credibility (even if it’s not the whole story). But when they generalise that experience outside that context (and over 14, 000 people take Celta each year), their credibility goes up in a puff of acrid smoke.

What all Celta courses principally share is a common syllabus and set of assessment criteria. I think any discussion about Celta method etc needs to be grounded in one or both of those. It’s true that, in addition to the syllabus and criteria, Celta courses have a much looser and more informal set of shared values and practices, including concept checking, task before text, paired checking before whole class, focus on meaning, form, pronunciation etc. Few of these are stated explicitly in the syllabus; you won't see any mention of 'concept checking or TTT', for instance, though they are major preoccupations of most Celta courses I've taught on or observed. Basically, these are ways in which teaching goals, such as checking understanding and increasing student participation are typically achieved in settings where many of the trainees will be teaching.

Some trainees do see some or all of these as dogma – e.g. having to, for instance, give an instruction before handing out materials (‘task before text’); having to speak clearly and concisely  to the students, spending much of the 'teaching' time just listening and observing student engagement with language tasks (‘reducing TTT’); seeing things like ‘MFP – Meaning, Form, Pronunciation’ on their feedback sheets, etc. But I don’t really see anything fundamentally wrong with this. Celta is a training course and such terms fill a need - they highlight key competences that novice (and many practising)  teachers need to develop – and I think the vast majority of trainees can see the point of this.

 

Like all training courses for anything, sometimes the basics get overdone – a trainee might get criticised for not asking a check question, when they feel the instruction and demonstration of an activity has already been crystal clear. It happens. But surely the nature of training is getting intensive awareness-raising and practice in effective techniques, even at the risk of overkill, so that as the teacher grows in experience, they are able to use these techniques confidently and selectively? And no student has, I believe, ever been harmed by too much clarity.

Other complaints are about the whims or inconsistencies of trainers. Again, it's hard to know what to make of complaints of this nature, without knowing any of the people involved or what happened in the incidents, which typically involve unnamed people in an unspecified context (ideal for a Samuel Beckett play; problematic for meaningful discussion of what actually went on). Anyway, inconsistency is a challenge for all performance assessment, whatever field it’s in. I think you just have to accept that someone else may not share the high perception you have of your own performance – and try to remember the many other occasions on which you’ve benefited from over-generous appraisal – it does tend to even out in the end.

 

On a Celta course, there are at least two different trainers, at least two progress reports, with action points for the next stage, and at least one face-to-face individual consultations between trainers and trainees. In addition, the course is visited by an external moderator, who samples the assessment, and some of the teaching, in order to give the trainers feedback about their assessments of teaching and written work. This seems to me a reasonable level of checks and balances - and much more than the average professional or academic training course.

But what about trainer whims? One trainer might be enamoured of multiple intelligence theories or learning styles; or for having students moving around the classroom as much as possible. Another might be dead against any teaching of decontextualised language; or insist on every listening exercise having a gist task followed by a detailed task; and one might be dead keen on the use of ‘real’ data from concordances in the classroom. I’m personally not convinced by any of these beliefs or methods, but they are found, to varying extents, in our profession. I don’t think you can blame Celta for the fact that some of the experienced, practising teachers who work as Celta trainers  hold them. And the fact that some Celta trainers believe them and others don’t is hardly evidence that Celta is rigid and dogmatic!

 

I think most Celta trainees are actually willing to accept that their trainers are human beings, with their own strengths and limitations, and their own beliefs, and, if they can put up with the limitations, they learn a good deal from these people’s expertise and dedication to their progress. And if anyone feels that they’re being penalised for not including students’ learning styles on their lesson plans (never seen this happen, but for the sake of argument …), they do have the opportunity to raise this with the visiting assessor at a meeting or in a confidential chat. It may not be perfect, but it’s streaks ahead of what is available in many other areas of tertiary education and training, where assessment practices are pretty opaque and individual whims and follies of trainers run unchecked.